


Under the Elen

by Gloromeien



Series: In Earendil's Light Trilogy [2]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 16:38:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gloromeien/pseuds/Gloromeien
Summary: A horrific premonition calls the questing twins home





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.   
> Author’s Note: So many people enjoyed In Earendil’s Light – none more than I myself writing it – and that tale left so many threads unknotted that I decided to explore the aftermath in terms of the actual Lord of the Rings narrative. Remember, though, that some parts are still considered a bit AU. Would probably be best to read In Earendil’s Light before this, as little will make sense to you. Here goes nothing!!  
> Feedback: Would be delightful.   
> Dedication: To the lovely and gracious Eresse, who here receives (though she didn’t really ask) and whose fics enthrall me. Go read hers first!!

Part One

Yavië, Yen 3018, Third Age

The night was fierce, sightless, beneath the giant trees of Carrock, their raven-wing branches and tar-heavy leaves blacking out the hospitably rotund Ithil of the late autumnal season. A brutal exhaustion had forced them westward from the Mirkwood Mountains, where the Woodland Elves still made their stand against a motherload of Orcs. Their garments mired in violet, heathen gore, their bodies scarred and beaten by days of relentless combat, Elrohir had though to make their bed in the seething mulch at tree-foot, when Elladan had suddenly, though not unexpectedly, collapsed. Thankfully, no festering wound felled him, merely the final depletion of his near-boundless energies. As the plagued forest hissed out a guttural lullaby, Elrohir gathered Elladan closer to him and sought sleep’s blithe refuge. 

Sleep, alas, eluded him. 

Their warmblood steeds, long flown from the fray, would hopefully forewarn their return to Imladris, if Virgor and Leirac were not, as was their frequent custom while in the sanctuary of the Rivendell valley, distracted by the burgeoning cobapples trees which preceded the gates. Elrohir swallowed back his stomach’s fitful lurch at the thought of an orchard’s full of cobapples, sweet peaches, elape vines, and oarberry bushes that awaited their own return to the valley, ripe and ruddy as they could only be in the harvest season. For a moment, he envied the animals’ lack of reason, which allowed them such guiltless indulgence, the ecstasy of their gorgings. His own pack hid but a half-crust of lembas and a near-empty water flask; Elladan had lost his saddle-bag to a warg’s thieving fangs. The ox-hide leather was perhaps a fitting repast for a warg in its last seconds of existence, though Elladan had wished the creature would choke on it to spare him the arrows. 

The darkness held close as a hangman’s mask. Only the pale cast of his brother’s skin, cool as Ithil herself through the grime, was visible in the night’s shroud, the coarse wheeze of his breaths and the quick thump of his heartbeat the only audible sound. When they’d come upon the battle, then two days long, by some strange turn of chance, neither had hesitated to join with their Woodland fellows, which was much appreciated by Mithbrethil, who led the charge. Yet even before this encounter, Elladan had seemed unsettled, such as Elrohir had only witnessed in him once before. He’d thought those soul-braising days long past, but, as the days of battle wore on without interruption, the strain on Elladan’s resolve became palpable. Long reputed the most skilled and valiant warrior in Imladris, only one as vitally dear as Elrohir could make the sum of these lapsed moments and total their effect on his twin’s stealth; total them he had, and the result was unnerving. 

Glorfindel must be in some grave, unforeseen danger. 

This, and only this, could cause an elf-warrior of Elladan’s tenacity to even consider retreat. Thus, when Elrohir had feigned a message from their Lord and Ada begging their imminent return, Elladan had not quarreled with him. By that time, the battle tides had turned in Mirkwood’s favor and their absence would not be long felt. Indeed, the cacophonous shrieks and war cries to the east had quieted some with nightfall descended; Elrohir prayed that his binding-brother would emerge victorious by the morn. The teeming forest itself required sleep. 

Elladan’s, however, was proving more troubled by the minute. Scored fingers gripped into his sides, the once-leaden body now clenched, quaking, as garbled curses were muttered into his chest. Elrohir huddled them closer together, but a glacial wind kicked up as if by Elladan’s own boots. The phantom gusts pelted them with thorny sticks, shards of root, and clumps of fetid moss, a cyclone of swept up leaves flapping like bat’s wings. Elrohir had heard from Legolas that the Shadow-sick Mirkwood had been known, of late, to take on the misery of its occupants, to give elemental life to their most scathing dreams. The elf-knight wondered if, with Elladan in such cleaving throes, this was not presently the case. 

If so, there was but one remedy. 

“Gwanur-nin, I know you are weary,” Elrohir murmured to his restless twin. “But you must wake.” Elladan growled at some unknowable foe, but did not stir. “Wake, Elladan! We are exposed!” 

With a start, the elf-warrior sprung up onto all fours, his quicksilver eyes wild, watchful, their iridescent glow sign of his somnambulant link to his husband’s threatened /fea/. Elrohir noted, to his ever-gaining disquiet, that the forest had stilled to near-paralysis. After a bleating sigh, Elladan collapsed over him anew, burrowing further into his embrace than he had since they were elflings. In the creeping silence, he cradled his trembling twin, but could think of naught but his own husband, of his Legolas. In his secret heart he renewed his nightly prayer: that he was well, that he was sound, that he was safe, from menace and from loneliness alike. 

From some vital, impermeable core within, an answer echoed from afar. Elrohir sighed, as Elladan wrenched himself away, any sign of earlier torment overlaid by a warrior’s implacable resolve.

“We must fly home at once,” he declared, a command not to be easily countered. “We cannot linger, even for the promise of further rest.” 

Elrohir knew better than to dare dissuade his twin in such moments. “What ails you, Elladan?” 

“The black riders are upon him,” Elladan snapped. “Come, we must make haste, gwanur.”

************************************

Quellë, Yen 3018, Third Age

As the eloquent tone of the low-chime reverberated through the alcove adjacent to the Halls of Healing, Erestor lit another hallowax candle and bowed to the altar. Before settling into the supplicant’s pose, he offered a supportive hand to Glorfindel, who snorted indignantly and waved him away. 

“Save your ministrations for the halfling,” he snipped, his garrulous mood betraying his anxiety. 

For hours since the hobbit fellowship’s raucous advent into the quiescent halls of Imladris, Glorfindel had been besieged by their wondering questions, thus his befouled humor. Normally complacent in the mouth of chaos, Erestor instinctively surmised that, once Frodo was delivered and his companions cared for, Glorfindel kept little thought for his own beleaguered state. His mind, as ever, longed for Elladan. 

In the Healing Halls, amidst the hobbit frenzy, he had eventually withdrawn into an isolated corner and tempered his own chase-worn nerves with a few hastily whispered prayers. Sinking to his knees, Glorfindel had then attempted a /callar/, a summoning of his soul’s flame to conflagrate with rare intensity. This effigy of light and of hope became a beacon through the otherworld to that of its wandering mate, beckoning this other to flame in turn. For the pious and skilled warrior, the practice was only possible after moments of great strife, an immediate reassurance to one’s duty-absent, yet fear-pricked, bonded. As the /fea/ instinctively emitted a similar pulse when fatally threatened as summons for aid, this second confirmed the beloved’s safety, wholeness, and, in most cases, triumph. 

When, after several attempts, the sheen of Glorfindel’s skin dimmed to a waxen countenance, Erestor had become concerned. Though the /callar/ state could not be forced nor unduly prolonged, the Balrog-slayer was more adept than most at its performance. This event was not the first to urge him to connect with Elladan in the wilds, both lovers were careful to preserve the delicate, deeply held nature of their union. Yet Glorfindel had turned wan, almost listless, as if the strain were sapping his life-force. Only after many brusque jolts of shaking, by Estel no less, did he rouse. 

The halflings long settled, Erestor had knelt by his friend, the guard-captain’s face ashen. 

“Take your ease, meldir,” the seneschal had counseled him. “He will know you are safe.” 

“He will not respond,” Glorfindel had explained, both his frustration and his mounting dread writ across his clenched features. “I can no longer sense his… his light.”

“You would sense if he had passed on,” Erestor had assured him, to little avail. “There would be… an absence. Your strength would diminish some.” /You would begin to fade even before the fact was known/, Erestor reminded himself, before examining the guard-captain’s skin with greater care to such dire symptoms. Glorfindel, to his relief, had appeared well enough, so he had suggested they seek blessing by the Valar. The Balrog-slayer, as many of the most valiant warriors, found solace in ritual and in the sacrifice of worship. 

Glorfindel knelt at his side, again corralling his senses inward. Erestor took on the proper pose, focused his own fretful mind, then harmonized with the centering note his friend sang true. Despite his earnest concentration, he registered a disturbance elsewhere in the Homely House, then inwardly chastised those rambunctious, ever-starving hobbits. He added a prayer of thanks to the Valar, that Estel seemed to have some small patience with them. 

As the minutes passed, Glorfindel’s desperate song became a keening mewl, as their efforts again proved fruitless. He leapt to his feet as only the swiftest combatant could, his sleek frame wrought with tension. 

“Where *is* he?!” he growled, coiling his arms together across his heaving chest. 

Though Glorfindel remained oblivious to all but his own ire, faint shouts sounded down the outside hall. Erestor began to wonder if all was indeed right at Imladris, but certainly did not want to further alarm his friend. He rose with practiced grace, but did not dare approach the fuming Balrog-slayer. 

“He may be in the heat of battle himself,” Erestor conjectured, though he doubted his own words. “The twins are questing, after all. His soul may not be open enough to receive you.” 

“That has never occurred before,” Glorfindel grunted, but the thought had caught him up, for better or for worse.

“Aye, if it had, you would not be so provoked, mellon-nin,” Erestor noted kindly. “Regardless, you must not further stress your own /fea/. I fear too much time has passed for a proper connection to be made.” 

“Then what shall I do?” Glorfindel countered. “Rise with the dawn and seek-out danger to allow another /callar/? How else can I be assured that he is not…” The guard-captain faltered. Erestor had never before seen him falter so. “Is not…” 

Before Erestor could offer further encouragement, the curtains to the alcove were slung apart and Elladan himself flew forth. Glorfindel barely had time to react, when Elladan seized him by the shoulders and shook him savagely. 

“Fool!!” he bellowed, his face flush with rage. “Fool-hardy, witless, pride-sick, arrogant, unthinking, overzealous, glory-blind…arrrrggghhhh!!” As he roared, he tossed Glorfindel back as if an impudent cub. To his credit, the startled guard-captain managed to swallow back his emergent smile. “Have you no reason, nor regard for our binding-troths? Did you not bear witness to their torments, how they gouge and maim, how they pervert the essence of their prey until life and will is sundered within? They pursued me for a millennia! They almost had my heart of you, Glorfindel!!”

“You would they took hold of the Ring, then?” Glorfindel ventured in response, his bemusement no longer so deftly hidden. 

“Ring?!” Elladan blustered, incensed by his calm. He pounced on Glorfindel anew, but this assault was cautious, caring. He enclosed his dear husband in a tight, needful embrace. A fearsome shiver shook him as he pressed their faces close, Glorfindel’s gentled hands stroking the length of his still shuddering back. “What ring holds power over me, other than the band that seals our binding? I would rather melt the mirthril down and drink the molten liquid as lovely miruvor than lose you for the sake of a simple ring.” 

His anger spent and his beloved safe, Elladan claimed his mouth in an urgent, edifying kiss, which captivated them both for such time that Erestor soon thought best to take his leave. The kiss was softened to lingering caresses, however, when Glorfindel cupped his beloved’s face in his hands and thereby felt the scars on his neck. He himself had not changed since his arrival, both were in dire need of some refreshment. The grumbling emitted from Elladan’s middle only served to underline this necessity. His young husband, however, remained oblivious to else but he himself. 

“Too long have I been absent, meleth-nin,” he remarked. “Two seasons seems an eternity away. I am done with questing.”

“Indeed, you know not the awful truth of your hasty words,” Glorfindel turned thoughtful. “Though I am glad of your return. I could not bear to have you gone for war without seeing you once again.” 

“War?” Elladan inquired, incredulous, but then he saw the truth in his husband’s eyes and shuddered anew at its import. “The Ring… it has resurfaced, at last. Sauron will come for us all.” 

“Aye,” Glorfindel nodded somberly. His finger traced the length of Elladan’s lissome, leaf-shaped ear, a gesture of tenderness between them. “I will tell all of my adventures, but only after some repose. Our fate’s not yet halfway decided… and my husband not yet given proper welcome home.” 

“Indeed,” Elladan smirked, eager to forget his ominous words and be reunited with his beloved. 

There was, it seemed, little time left for such indulgences. 

***************************************

A shrill wind whipped through the gates to the Last Homely House, sweeping along the ivy-dripping walls of the courtyard and swirling their brittle leaves around the dormant fountain at its center. Though reluctant to cover the resplendent canopy of stars above with the thick indigo material of his cloak, Elrohir nevertheless chose to shelter his face from the wild wind. In contrast to the pin-prick lights of the night sky, a trail of glowing lanterns beckoned in the distance, as a party made its way through the heart of the Rivendell Valley. 

The convoy from Mirkwood would soon be arrived; among their ranks was the blithe husband he had not seen for almost eighteen turns of the moon, whose sallow grace, on this crisp night, proved too finicky to guide them. Both to ease their path and to quell his anticipation, Elrohir began to sing. Whether in rowdy drinking choruses or among a beatific elven choir, the elf-knight’s voice was rarely raised loud enough for distinction, though this detracted little from its true, poignant tenor. Clear as a glacier stream, filtered ever-pure through his heart’s yearning, the melancholy song trickled over the mountain’s edge, into the hush darkness below. Even the wind sped away, too blustery to bear such a longing melody. 

As the last strains wafted into the autumn midnight, a figure crept up behind. With the wind ran off, Elrohir lowered the hood of his cloak to greet his foster brother, a slight, burdened smile quivering his lips. Aragorn’s face was, as ever, similarly shroud by weighty thoughts, though Elrohir had never known him otherwise, since he had been snared by the love of their sister. The ranger and future king seemed, in that quiet moment, the perfect foil to his own encroaching doubts. 

“The dark is bitter welcome to your beloved, gwanur-nin,” Aragorn rumbled, alight at his side. 

“These are bitter times, Estel,” Elrohir remarked softly. “Where is Ada?” 

“Tending the young hobbit,” Aragorn smirked. “Where else?” 

“*Indeed*,” Elrohir snorted, then schooled himself.

“Though I wager he judged your welcome of greater comfort to a Mirkwood charge,” the ranger smiled outright this time, lifting a haunch onto the rail. Though his reputation for brooding preceded him, he rarely missed a chance to taunt his half-brother, especially when such sour moods made him such a ready target. “How long have you been parted?”

“Too long,” the solemn peredhel replied. He foist his keen eyes at Aragorn, then, their argent sheen hard as mithril in the starlight. “Yet soon again will we be parted. Perhaps forever long, perhaps… perhaps for some endless time of waiting. If rumor is to be believed, you and your bleak fellowship would lead him straight to Mandos.” 

“It is the Shadow that so beckons, Elrohir, not my as yet unfounded fellowship,” Aragorn countered. 

“Shadow’s machinations or will-weak fellowship, either blame leaves me widowed.” 

“You are not the only one who holds him dear,” Aragorn nearly growled, on his feet in an instant. “Nor the only lover to be forsaken in service of these troubled times.” 

Perceiving the necessary defiance in his slate-strong eyes, Elrohir swallowed a grin of grudging satisfaction and took his half-brother’s fisted hand in his. 

“Peace, Estel,” he whispered, with some reservation still. “I know well of your sacrifice. I am brother to a fretful sister as well as fretting husband to a dauntless elf. I would that both weather the coming war; the sister with patience, the husband with vigilance. Yet I am half a man, and know a man’s restlessness, a man’s doubt. As a man and warrior both, I hope you will heed my counsel, in this. When the moment comes…charge. Strike. Do not hesitate. Else we will both suffer the unspeakable consequence.” 

Aragorn fell characteristically silent, his half-brother’s sentiments echoing his own preoccupying concerns with destiny, the price of valor, and the Shadow’s incipient rise. The pair loomed on the upper stair, gray and solemn as the statues of their elders. The trail of approaching lantern lights floated past the forest’s edge, the cast of their gauzy beams haloing their bearer’s cloaks. 

The formality of their garments gave Elrohir pause, as Aragorn glowered behind. He, too, soon caught wind of the peculiar gesture. His lips clenched, forming words with care.

“When I was last in Mirkwood, to deliver the rotted creature,” Aragorn of a sudden expounded. “There was… a palpable frost between the King and his youngest.” 

“Much love has been lost between them,” Elrohir noted, though wondered at his intent. “I thought that, as his stay lengthened, Legolas might have sought to re-forge their bond.” 

“I think not, gwanur,” Aragorn posited, with extreme caution. “A wise elf might, at present, chose to put aside talk of Shadow and concern himself with more imminent threats. Such as a son’s preoccupations with a father’s torments. Such cloying thoughts do not allay themselves on the battlefield, after all, but rear the soul when blood rages hot.” 

“I see,” Elrohir murmured, with a particularly elven reserve, at his condescension. Thranduil’s machinations were hardly cause for undue alarm.

Goaded by the cool response, Aragorn crossed his meaty arms over his chest and grunted hotly. Only when he saw the party breech the main gate did his ire subside. Even he was not fool enough to welcome the convoy with a surly frown. 

While only a dozen lanterns lit their way, a hundred or more riders poured into the courtyard, far more than the expected twenty. By the time their leaders, Legolas and his brother Luinaelin, mounted the steps to the main hall, at least double the original number had trekked in from the forest path, their billowy black cloaks uncommonly dire for the people of the once-great Greenwood and descendent of the lively Silvan wood-folk. Rarely did a Mirkwood elf own tunics darker than maroon, yet these were sheathed as faceless Nazgul, their golden hair bound in tight buns and covered in knit skull-caps. 

Legolas himself looked wan, oddly penitent, keeping back from Elrohir and allowing Luinaelin to speak for their tribe. 

“Suilad, Elrohir Peredhel,” Luinaelin presented himself, as if a stranger to these lands. “This band of Sindar in my charge humbly requests an audience with the Lord Elrond.”

“Lord Elrond has bid me welcome you, Prince of Mirkwood,” Elrohir explained, incredulous at his behavior but waiting for some further explanation. Aragorn, guessing the worst, remained silent. “I will advise him of further news.” 

“I regret that I no longer bear such a title, though from Mirkwood I do hail,” Luinaelin corrected him, to everyone’s shock. “Please address me by my given name, as I hope I may so address you, Elrohir.” 

Despite his renown acuity in all things diplomatic, Elrohir proved too worrisome not to give in to emotion. When he dared approach his prideful kinsbrother and clasp his slender arms, he perceived how the other surreptitiously trembled. 

“Luinaelin, what is this madness?!” he exclaimed. “What has befallen you?!” The Son of Mirkwood, unable to meet the elf-knight’s questing stare, looked back to his brother.

“We are exiled,” Legolas answered, his face betraying a mix of sorrow and of shame. “By order of Thranduil, the King. A party of Silvan truehearts seeking refuge in this Last Homely House.”

As Elrohir’s incredulous mithril eyes slid from Luinaelin’s pained visage to that of his winsome beloved, the entire gathering stilled. Several suffocating moments passed, Elrohir glaring, Legolas with his head bowed. 

“Then refuge you shall have,” the Son of Elrond pronounced, as a communal sigh washed over the company. 

************ 

Hours later, as he carried a hastily prepared late-night meal to his bedchamber, Elrohir still reeled from the Mirkwood convoy’s advent, though their tale of exile remained untold. Instead, he had been busied with arrangements. The once-princely brothers had insisted on their party’s concealment, no easy feat even within the forest haunts. For the night, the Silvan tribe would camp in the valley’s training fields; some better arrangements waited his father’s skilled attentions. The *princes*, though insistent on remaining with their people even after a suitable camp was erected, were finally lured into proper bedchambers by a roused Glorfindel’s unwavering order. Luinaelin was now embedded in conversation with the guard-captain, while Elrohir had managed to secret Legolas away to their bedchamber. 

Shame-wrecked and deathly silent, not a word of endearment had passed between them since his arrival. Amidst the frantic camp preparations, Elrohir occasionally caught a trace of his husband’s troubled eyes on his back, but, when he turned to meet them, they had been hastily recalled. Legolas had followed him to bed as if by duty bound, not a glimpse of relief at the promise of sanctuary there, at the consolation of a lover’s regard, evident on his stoic face. Once behind closed doors, he’d sat himself on the edge of the bed as if awaiting a particularly harsh scolding, even the most basic questions – are you weary? would you bathe? may I fetch some small repast from the kitchens? – met with curt, colorless replies. Some greater mischief was afoot, some Thranduillian scheme only the most patient coddling could unravel; as he balanced the unruly tray along the passageway, Elrohir was doubly determined to shred the filial ties that ensnared his husband’s heart and bind himself anew to its graces. 

Curled up by the mist-clouded window, Legolas leap to attention when the door was opened. He watched Elrohir set down the tray with round, anxious eyes, their iridescent pools muted by further shame. When he saw with what care the hearty, if simple, meal was prepared, he sunk into himself, his head again bowed, as if in quiet supplication. This fortuitously allowed stealthy Elrohir to sneak up and embrace him, enveloping his mournful archer in warm, willing arms. At first, Legolas fought against this embrace, but eventually the heat of his husband’s care smote his defenses and, with a piercing cry, he gave in. Legolas hugged him with such force, such desperation that Elrohir thought he might snap his back. Though the archer would not concede to tears, he whined like a wounded animal and clutched his body as if this contact might be their last. 

“Melethron,” Elrohir whispered, when he felt his husband’s grip lessen some. “What under the elen has befallen you?” 

With a whimper that cracked his very heart, Legolas wrenched himself away. He schooled his countenance as a warrior might, reigning in his emotions until his very eyes seemed crafted of callow blue steel. Elrohir stood aloft, concern and fear overwhelming him. He surveyed the elf before him with tenuous calm, as Elrond might examine a patient of his own family, yet under his care. This was not his husband, his Legolas: warrior of relentless skill, lover of unimpeachable sweetness, partner of such valor and honor that Elbereth herself might steal him away from jealousy. He could not fathom what calamity would cause Legolas to behave so coldly towards him, but he felt he might yet discover one before dawn. His own gleaming silver eyes met with those of steel and of stone; he awaited what would certainly prove to be his confession. 

“I… I am exiled from the Mirkwood forest,” Legolas reiterated, as if to gather strength from such a statement of established fact. “I am no longer a Prince of Thranduil’s realm.” 

“So you’ve said,” Elrohir acknowledged, betraying considerable frustration. He reconsidered his stance, instead moving to sit in the armed seat of their chaise longue. He gestured for Legolas to sit at its edge, distance enough for a confession, but close enough to catch him up in his arms again. After some deliberation, Legolas lowered himself down. “What precipitated this… bold move on your Ada’s part.” 

“I have no Ada,” Legolas spat, his anger plain. “I am disowned by the Mirkwood King.” Conscious of his rising emotion, the archer swallowed back his brimming rage and offered Elrohir his explanation. “I discovered, this last midsummer, that Thranduil had for some time known of my allegiance to Lord Celeborn.” Elrohir gasped despite himself, disquiet screaming into his pointed ears at the potential damage this knowledge of Thranduil’s might incur; had, no doubt, already incurred on Legolas’ spirit. “During my long stay in Mirkwood, he behaved in an affectionate and loving manner towards my brothers and I, so much so that I came to believe he had regained some of the temperance I had known of the Ada of my youth. I was, however, thoroughly and heartlessly deceived.” 

Pain struck him then, a full, unrestrained blow, and Legolas winced as if aged in man-years. He kept his eyes to the ground, struggling through the next passage. 

“I will not trouble you with the revenge he wreaked on Luinaelin,” he continued. “For he had of late joined our ranks. But as your husband… by our hallowed vows I must report… that I have… I have been…” Legolas growled with frustration at his own weakness, but went on. “On the night of the midsummer feasting, the King had my drink tainted with an elixir. The draught dulls the mind and… heightens the senses. You thirst, endlessly, for more, and each cup brimmed with poison. The man who was my father… had his witches spell me, so that in my drunken slumber I might dream. I dreamt of you, Elrohir, I thought that you were near, that we were… intimate. How they so winningly conjured your likeness, I will never come to know, but… I felt you, there, and was roused as only your touch… your sweetness can…” He halted and turned further away, his self-sickness acute. He growled again, shook his head violently, then soldiered on. “I awoke to find a… a woman, in my bed. A female of the Dunedain, a cousin of Aragorn’s as it turns out. She neither remembered the previous night, save drinking a similar potion, but the evidence of what had transpired there was… was clear enough.” Legolas steeled anew, as if preparing for a singe from the eye of Sauron himself. “I… I have betrayed our vow, my bonded. I have betrayed *you*.” 

Without a second’s hesitation and with a tremendous sigh of relief, Elrohir again enveloped Legolas in a back-breaking embrace. Legolas, besotted by astonishment, hung limp in his arms, until Elrohir sought out his paled lips and he began to quake. 

“D-did you not m-mark me, Elrohir?” he bleated. “I’ve… I -… how can you…?” 

“Legolas!” Elrohir chided good-naturedly. “Have you not marked your own tale? You were poisoned and spelled, by your Ada no less, and you act as if you’d taken a hundred lovers in secret and deliberately sought to deceive me! How could I not forgive this… I would not even name it a transgression, since you were victim to a foul plot and in no way accountable for your actions.” 

“B-but…” Legolas attempted to object, but Elrohir fixed him with a look of such tenderness and compassion that he was speechless once again. 

Elrohir, seeing this defeat unfold, gathered his beloved against him and at last claimed the mouth that had been so long kept from him. As his lover’s kiss deepened and his locked-away emotions were unleashed, Legolas, so keenly provoked, began to weep. Elrohir lowered the beleaguered archer’s head onto his shoulder, never breaking his hold around him. Legolas’ sobs were short-lived, however, as he swiftly composed himself to finish his tale. 

“I have not told the last of it,” he rasped, his dulcet voice still thick with feeling. 

“Indeed not,” Elrohir acknowledged. “How did you come to be exiled?” 

“It took me some months to uncover the root of this foul plot against me,” Legolas recalled. “As I said, my brother was similarly beset by these prankish schemes. When we did discover the cause, the master, and confronted him, a war of wills began. He rallied his supporters, Luinaelin and I were forced to rally our own. All of our fears for the future of Mirkwood, of the Silvan people, were presented to the King. His response was to disown us, and to order our exile from the Mirkwood. To our great surprise… the party you saw packed up and left with us.”

“Argument enough for your righteousness,” Elrohir remarked. “Would you not agree?”

“My cause may be righteous,” Legolas whispered. “But my behavior toward you, my most beloved one… has been grievous in the extreme.” 

“I grieve not, maltaren-nin, for the loss of one’s night’s devotion,” Elrohir dismissed his still-gnawing concerns. “Under Thranduil’s rule, to suffer but one night’s poison is a blessing.” The elf-knight stifled a smirk, then eyed his husband sharply. “It *was* but one night?”

“Of course!!” Legolas blustered, his eyes newly alight with fear. 

Elrohir chuckled, then sighed. Tickling fingers traced the rim of his husband’s leaf-shaped ear, his gaze turned hot with affection and with regard. Legolas, still bashful, allowed this quiet moment between them, tucking further into Elrohir’s still-vigilant embrace. 

“This exile is perhaps not so unwelcome,” Elrohir noted thoughtfully. “If you must now permanently reside in Imladris.” 

“And what of the Silvan tribe?” Legolas queried, though he had grown so tired that any further consideration of such matters was troublesome. “What of my people?” 

“There may yet be room under our eaves,” Elrohir considered. “There is ample room in Lorien, for certes. Luinaelin, perhaps, will lead them. I must insist, however, that you remain here.” He laughed rather fondly at this, nuzzling his face in the archer’s flaxen hair. “Consider it your penance.” 

At that, Legolas swallowed dully. He slipped, with utmost care, from Elrohir’s embrace, then caught up his husband’s lithe hands. 

“I have not yet finished, melethron,” he admitted. 

“What else, then?” Elrohir groaned. “I would have an end to these confessions, so that I might properly welcome my husband home.” Legolas’ smile was tentative, but it was there nonetheless.

“The night I spent with the Dunedain woman,” he explained. “Was not without… consequence.”

“How so?” Elrohir asked plainly, his interest piqued. 

“There…” Legolas began, but became uncertain of how to broach this particular subject. “A… a child is growing.” 

Elrohir’s jaw dropped rather unceremoniously, though Legolas kept up his listless hands. The former Prince of Mirkwood witnessed the dawning of realization break within his beloved, then spread from behind his eyes through his entire frame. His posture straightened. His arms tensed. His legs cinched together, his haunches clenched, and his chin jutted out like the prow of a ship. 

He beamed bright as the beacon of Gondor over Edoras. 

“A child,” he murmured with due reverence. “Your child, Legolas. A peredhel! Of mixed heritage, of your golden, elvish grace and of my mortal uncle’s line… *our* child, melethron.” He cupped Legolas’ face in his hands and kissed him soundly, as if infusing him with a unique, addictive form of ecstasy. “Why, this is wondrous news…” 

Legolas, finally allowing himself some soft measure of relief, smirked at Elrohir’s own rather childish behavior. He felt, after months of scarring self-flagellation, that he might eventually be mended. 

“The draught the lady drank was for fertility,” Legolas further commented, as Elrohir contemplated the seemingly endless possibilities of the situation. “The conception of a half-elf was meant as the ultimate insult. I fear Thranduil has so repressed the notion of our binding that he forgets how dearly held the peredhel are to me.” 

“Instead, his vengeance has wrought our greatest joy,” Elrohir noted with a ever-stretching grin. “Are you pleased by this turn of fate, lirimaer?”

“In truth, I had not considered much past its revelation,” he conceded, unable to resist, now forgiven, another kiss. “Though I had the foresight to bring the lady to Imladris.” 

“We must fetch her!” Elrohir instantly fretted. “She must sleep in a bed, not on the fell ground of the training fields!” 

“I have seen to her accommodation,” Legolas reassured him. “I am not heartless, meleth.” 

“Nay, you are so very kind,” Elrohir purred, drawing him ever-near. His fingers deftly unwound Legolas’ braids, then combed through the loosed lengths of cornsilk hair with unabashed pleasure. “And fine. And fair.” They moved to the ties of his tunic, his lips to the sweep of his neck. “And righteous, and splendid, and fearsome, and humble, and mine to reclaim this night…” 

As his beloved elf-knight peeled away his garments, Legolas suppressed his undaunted pangs of shame and attuned himself to his too-forgiving husband’s needs.

 

End of Part One


	2. Fathers

Part Two

Quellë, Yen 3018, Third Age

As he drifted into consciousness on this hazy morn, Glorfindel felt the telltale fingers twined into his hair, the winsome face tucked into the fold of his neck, the rib-cracking arms caging his chest and knew his husband was unconsciously fraught. Only when wrecked by worries beyond the means of his warrior’s spirit – a rarity for Elladan – did he return to the sleep habits of an elfling in a lightening storm, though the elf charged with coddling him remained the very same. Many thunder-quaked nights had he burrowed down the coverlet with his dear one and weathered the cacophonous squall above, tiny fingers knotted in his swaths of gold, even tinier body wasting not a scrap of space between them. Though this new trouble overcast his slumbering mind and not the dawning skies of their valley, Elladan was ever-bewildered by an adversary he could not strike, stab, or slay: the delicate balance of family affairs. 

As he caressed his beloved’s cheek to wake him, Glorfindel regretted that this morning’s rise would not be as most others they’d shared, groggy, groping, and somewhat giddy from last night’s loving. On such occasions, Elladan was often at his sweetest – a considerable testament for an elf-warrior of his hardened and elemental disposition, lazily surrendering himself to Glorfindel’s more playful fancies. Just the faint birchbark scent of Elladan’s morning-after skin was enough to pique his own, as were the aftershocks of feeling that echoed through him as his husband writhed himself awake, against him. 

A muffled groan bespoke of his treacherous mood. 

“I must go to my brother,” he announced, as through a clogged throat. “Something sits wrongly with him.” 

Concerned by his haste on such a soundless morn, Glorfindel loosened his grasp, but would not release him. “Are you certain all is well with you, meleth? You near balded me with your grip, this night past.” 

“I am long-passed my majority, Glorfindel,” he quickly snapped. Marking first his husband’s scowl, then his own tone, Elladan tempered. With a heavy-weight’s sigh, he pressed their faces together and wove their arms tight as the links of a mithril vestment. “Though for all my stealth on the battlefield, I am easily winded by our current circumstance. In truth, I have not felt so ineffectual since…” Elladan and Glorfindel both winced at the recollection of his previous heartache. Though their union had been blissful for hundreds of years, neither could ever truly allow themselves to forget the marital strife that preceded it, caused by the inexperience and the steel-hearted worldview of both blundering partners. “My attempts to shield Elrohir from the on-coming fire have proved… feeble, at best. I know not how to comfort him.” 

“He is the cool rush of water,” Glorfindel agreed. “You are the wildfire.” 

“Indeed,” Elladan grunted, with palpable bitterness. The image did, however, allow his thoughts a moment’s respite, considering the many times he had suitably enflamed his beloved. “Yet I know not how to warm him.” 

Glorfindel adjusted their position to meet his avid argent eyes. Elladan was frustrated, but his silver irises still glinted with flint-spark resolve. He was, as ever, undaunted by calamity or by the artlessness of his nature. If anything, his instincts hit the most blameworthy mark with deadly acuity.

“May the Valar forever curse Thranduil and his crude, scheming heart!!” Elladan spat suddenly, routing out the root cause of a valley’s worth of elven distress. “Were he the elf of his own legend, let alone worthy of his noble line and king’s mantle, not a laurel in all of Arda could be found, as Legolas would bear them all. Never have I known such a son to be so cruelly tricked by his sire! It burns me to cinder, to see my bond-brother so dishonored, to see my own twin’s binding frayed…”

“Yet Elrohir has hearkened to Legolas as never before,” the guard-captain noted, in quiet counsel. “It is the archer’s own shame that keeps his bonded aloft.” 

“And what warrior of noble birth would not cling to their shame, as to honor itself, in such straights?” Elladan insisted, as Legolas’ actions mirrored those he himself would take if so provoked. “Banished from his homeland wood, disowned by his Adar-King, left errant with half his people, begging for sanctuary… and having betrayed… his most beloved…” The elf-warrior struggled to center himself, though he evidenced a cutting sympathy for his bond-brother. 

Glorfindel’s brow, however, took on the shrewd angle of both a master diplomat and a longtime ambassador to the Mirkwood realm. His voice, soft as a caress, ventured forth its own, alternative interpretation of Thranduil’s recent action. 

“Though you are right to condemn him, melethron,” he considered. “Might I, for a moment, weave the bristled, disparate strands of the affair into a more intricate tapestry?” 

Elladan frowned at him, wondering. His husband’s wisdom, though often perplexing, was always welcome and he was, as ever, a rapt audience to this vital exposition. He laid back on the gathered pillows and bid him weave on. 

“Let us map out the players as key soldiers on a warfield,” Glorfindel expounded. “For we are, my brave one, at war, and Thranduil is both father and King – never simply one or the other. Both. Always. Why was Legolas born? What is his destiny? To face the armies of Sauron at the last alliance. What practical use will this destiny take on? He will be among the Fellowship to bear the Ring to Mordor.”

“It is certain, then,” Elladan whispered, humbled by his forthrightness. 

“Aye,” Glorfindel acknowledged, then pressed on. “Whether out of hubris or out of some misguided love for an adopted land, Legolas was conceived for this purpose alone, bred and trained with only this task in mind… and bound to the mate most likely to support this action and his participation in it. If you fault Thranduil in this, Elladan, you must also fault Elrond.” Silenced by this pure statement of fact, Elladan sighed anew. “And let us now speak of fathers and sons. Elrond is an Adar of far superior mettle than Thranduil, for certes. Elrohir has ever-known of this destiny, of the burden he will face as Legolas’ mate. He is not now troubled by his own part, but by Legolas’ disheartened spirit just months before departure. Is it not so?” 

“It is,” Elladan conceded, by now fascinated with the clarity of his husband’s vision. 

“Thranduil is, as you say, crude,” Glorfindel continued. “I who have known him since elflinghood know the truth of this. And how might the heart of such a crudely-formed father suffer the destiny of a dearly-held child? His opposition in matters of state? His deceiving? His betrayal?” When Glorfindel paused, Elladan could hear the subsequent words forming in his very throat. “His *loss* at the hands of a lifelong enemy? What would the father beholden to a King’s rule not do to bear this loss? Estrange himself from his child? Banish his son away, so that his purpose is set and his path clear? What would such a father, faced with such a sacrifice, not steal, or scheme for, or secret away, in hopes of retaining some small shred of his most beloved child’s glorious self? Think you that his grandchild’s provenance is some accidental consequence of a madman’s devising, or the intended result of a father’s longing to see his own child’s spirit live forever on?” 

Elladan, awed by this revelation, merely gaped at him.

“He behaved rashly, aye, and without the honor of his title… but not without reason,” Glorfindel added thoughtfully. As Elladan mulled over the meat of his argument, the guard-captain gathered him close again. 

“I could not make such a sacrifice and be sane ere-after,” the elf-warrior mused. ”Not of a brother, nor husband, nor child.” 

“Nor I,” Glorfindel agreed, then pulled his beloved into a tender embrace. “But we have not struggled as the Silvan people of Mirkwood under Sauron’s evil eye.” The feeling effortlessly rising between them, he thought better of indulgence on such a fretful morn. “Thus you must go to your brother and gift him with temperance. Dam his more tempestuous waters back and allow his grief to flow through you, not his world-weary husband. Elrohir must not be allowed to err as Thranduil has.” 

“So am I charged,” Elladan replied, with renewed fortitude and with an inspired kiss. “By *my* most wise and knowing beloved.” 

*****************************

Her belly bulged out in a half-oval from her limber, yet lithe, frame, the taught skin reflecting a puckered glow, like the brown shell of an egg. She watched, with a serenity reminiscent of the most gracious in elfkind, as Elrond’s healer’s hands carefully depressed the firm surface, accepting the touch as inquisitive, not intimate, as some might mistake it. The slenderness of her form was deceiving; the peach-lush skin, dancer’s limbs, and thoughtful brow forgot the harshness of her nomadic existence, the battle-fatted muscle folded beneath her hearty, meat-fed bones. Her face, though plumped by pregnancy, was heavily indebted to her Noldor ancestry: silver-flecked eyes, sheer sable hair, an aristocratic countenance. She looked, seated before Elros’ twin, more his human-mothered daughter than the mother of his grandchild. 

Yet, in few months time, mother to a peredhil she will be. 

Shroud in the elliptical arch of the doorway, Elrohir observed Neyanna’s examination with equal parts wonder and disquiet. At even the most casual of motions from his father, a flurry of questions more harrowing than a flight of Legolas’ most lethal arrows shot forth, though he managed to catch them all on his silence-stung tongue. In days past he had become well acquainted with Neyanna. Though there were no secrets nor resentments between them, he still kept counsel by the entranceway, if only to allow Elrond some peace. Indeed, the generosity of spirit with which the Dunedain lady had accepted his part in her child’s life continued to awe him; at times they seemed a more fitting, and certainly enthusiastic, couple than he, or she, with Legolas. The archer’s absence at this near-vital event further tugged at his already threadbare hold on patience, but he would not let this… if he was honest, predictable turn scrap this moment for him. Not when he could wring his fingers raw in anticipation of his father-healer’s conclusions.

After murmured permission from the preternaturally calm mother-to-be, Elrond lay his head against her burgeoning stomach and sung a note of pure, gorgeous tenor; the echo of which should marry to the baby’s heartbeat, if Elrohir properly recalled. Even the seasoned Elf-Lord could not mask the flash of sheer delight that crossed his face, when the proper echo resounded from within. Neyanna herself laughed, though wisely schooled herself. The chord of longing that was struck within the usually even-handed elf-knight, however, was evidenced in his shimmering mithril eyes. Forgetting himself, he stepped a few feet into the room, before a solid, if too knowing, clasp on his arm eased him back.

When he swirled around to face the bold elf that held him, Elladan’s bemused countenance irked him all the more. 

“Peace,” his brother smirked. “Ada will soon beckon you forth. Give him time with the little one.” Though Elrohir scowled, he could not long keep his eyes from Neyanna’s womb and thus acquiesced with uncharacteristic ease. Relieved by his twin’s fond company, he allowed himself a first, quiet smile. 

“She weathers this like a long, balming bath,” Elrohir groused good-naturedly. “I cannot fathom how she maintains such…” 

“She is of our line,” Elladan remarked appreciatively. “The hush colors of twilight favor her. The Mirkwood may have chosen such a comely field for deception’s sake, but the seed therein will reap the fairness such a beauty sows, harvesting the best elements of both parents. It is as if you yourself would bear Legolas’ child.” The elf-warrior noted the sorrow that creased his brother’s eyes, and bit his over-eager tongue. “I forget myself, Elrohir, I did not mean-“

“One need spill his husband’s seed to bear his child,” Elrohir muttered to himself, though Elladan marked him clearly. 

Weaving an arm around his troubled twin’s waist, Elladan gestured towards the waiting corridor. With visible reluctance, Elrohir let himself be ushered away; he had vowed to keep his marital woes far from Neyanna’s knowing, least she suffer them too acutely. She was, after all, hardly their cause nor their instigator. Once cautiously out of range, Elladan opened his inquiry as if a glass menagerie; delicately, yet with surety. 

“I admit that at first I was confounded by your… glee, gwanur-nin,” the elf-warrior ventured. “It heartens me to know that, though the circumstance of the conception is somewhat fractious, our little peredhil will be triply loved.”

“I cannot measure a child’s worth against its grandsire’s machinations,” Elrohir replied, his ever-present diplomacy returning with a vengeance. “Whatever the circumstance, we are faced with the advent of a new being and the little one, as you say, deserves our reverence.” The elf-knight considered the matter more closely, then pressed on. “I have not forgotten the manner of our child’s begetting. I will never forget it, not for my husband’s unwitting action, but for his Adar’s lunacy! It will serve as sobering example, in the more trying times of my parenthood, as our own Ada’s fine example always shall. But how could I forgo loving my Legolas’ child? I am not that creature.” 

“You would be no creature, nin bellas,” Elladan quietly observed, knowing this particular point to be difficult. “Merely a elf whose heart has worn some.” 

As Elrohir weighed this against the balance of his feelings, a panoply of emotions played across his regal features. He came to a frightfully quick resolution. 

“My heart is whole and hale as ever, gwanur,” he assured him, his face almost beatific with long-kept affection. “It is so full and ripe with this news I feel it might burst and flood my entire being with its heady pulp. Even when I related the tale to Ada – whose scorn in this I mightily feared – its swell smothered out the more noxious fumes of my worry and nearly choked me with feeling when he… he sung a blessing, to bounteous Elbereth…” The moment lived again on his beaming features, as argent eyes shimmered with pride at the recollection. Only a hint of sadness rippled beneath their sheen, when he revealed a close-held wish. “Since before our binding day, I had so longed for… I knew not how it might come to pass and would not forgo a moment of Legolas’ loving for the privilege of fatherhood, but… I had always thought, you see, to have children of my own. How could one with such parents as ours not think on this? But I loved an ellon and was content in that love, until… the Lady herself blessed us.” Elrohir huffed mightily, overcome by his startlingly strong emotions and embarrassed by his lack of decorum, even before his own twin. 

“You have never before spoke of such things,” Elladan essayed, rather startled by this revelation. 

“How does one…?” Elrohir mused, still flustered. “We live in a time of war. We are warriors… I knew not how… I still do not know how, with Legolas already lost in the foothills of his impending quest… yet I must. And I *will*. For love of him, I will.” 

“His love has not forsaken you, gwanur,” Elladan counseled softly. “He is merely…” 

With a near-growl of frustration, Elrohir launched himself down a different, yet equally affecting, path of revelation. 

“He acts as my slave,” he blustered, though obviously forlorn. “As if I were some elf-maid and not the archer who taught him to string a longbow!! He will not counter me, nor argue, in every matter or thing he bends to my will. He lies with me out of duty. He will not take his pleasure, will not allow me to pleasure him, only diligently kneels to my own until I spend out of sheer spite!” Elladan gasped despite himself, the memory of his similar, past frustrations with Glorfindel painfully summoned back. “Where is my heart-husband? Where is my mate? War is upon us and I… I fear we may never…” 

Elrohir’s litany of heartache was then stifled by Elladan’s crushing arms, as he hearkened his twin to him. Even as he burrowed himself further into his brother’s iron-held embrace, he sucked back peals of vital air. Neither the elf-knight nor the diplomat’s pride would withstand the sting of tears. Holding strong against the tide of sickening emotion, Elladan’s warrior-instincts had their own ideas and methods of dealing with Legolas’ foolish choices, but he also remembered Glorfindel’s counsel and proceeded to give some of his own. 

“Ah, gwanur-nin,” he almost chuckled. “Has your beleaguered mind so swiftly forgotten how Legolas first came to love you? The timid, wide-eyed elf that beheld us after the goblin battle in Mirkwood and trembled at our very presence? Are you not the elf who taught him his bed-manners, eased him through his first majority with the gentility of touch and the breadth of feeling only the most skilled of lovers possess, and thus forever earned yourself not an intended, but a beloved?” Elrohir broke free of his brother’s arms, his face wondering at his true meaning and his eyebrow arched defiantly. “You are his chosen husband and most cherished lover. Seduce him!!”

After a brief moment’s astonishment at his brazenness, Elrohir trilled with laughter and relief.

******************************************

The day was ending. The solemn trees of the mountainside - ederwood, elm, birch, and pine; wintering, leafless trees - stilled the blithe susurrations of their bare, spindly branches and laxed their bows in deference, as if the very forest thick knew of his choice, of his charge. The late autumn sun, cool and pale as a specter, haloed the stark trunks of the trees with brume, in preparation for her nightly rest. In the West, to where the light of the Eldar was passing. To Valinor’s dull tranquility. 

Yet some would linger still, Legolas thought to himself, as Virgor clopped over the gnarled roots and the sheer stone shelves of the high mountain. Astride the horse’s undulating back - who knew the way better than he - and after five hours of journeying, the archer was lulled into a near mesmeric state; free to ponder, with lungs full of untainted air and a head cleansed of bickering, the circumstance of his slow path up the hillside. Now that the quake of the Ring’s first revelation had seized him and he knew of its onerous intent, he sought to reconcile with the one he had so thoughtlessly offended these last, precious nights, out of pride, out of doubt. 

Legolas had never before truly known doubt; not as the youngest, misbegotten son of raging Thranduil, nor as an archer of preternatural talent, not as the lover so gently woken by the revered brethren son of Elrond, nor as this peredhil’s peerless mate. As he had earlier stolen down to the stables, in the wake of Elrond’s valorous Council and a whispered message from Erestor, he had recalled a similar, yet brief, moment of doubt on the morn that long ago followed his binding night. Bliss-drunk from their relentless coupling and longing to spirit themselves away to their honey-cottage, he and Elrohir had staggered through the hay bales, giddy, besotted, to await Elladan. When an hour had passed and his missing pressed on, Elrohir had concluded, with a terrific struggle for resolve, that he would not join them. As his new husband had readied the horses, Legolas had somehow come to realize, in a moment of warped, near-clairvoyant serendipity, the truth of Elladan’s predicament. His keen mind had totaled all the twinges, the muffled groans, the sighs, the dimming iridescence of his quicksilver eyes and the doting manner in which he’d coddled his twin the night before. As if it had been his last. 

He’d found his husband’s flirty, eager gaze across the barn and had doubted his ability to shield him from the coming blow, from the grief that might well have sundered him. Moments later, as they cantered through the gates, Elladan himself had called to them and Legolas had regained vital breath. Yet the memory roused itself anew, this evening, as Virgor again galloped towards the same cottage above the Rivendell valley as on that telltale morn, though now his fretful and forlorn husband awaited him there. Awaited assurances he could not provide him. Awaited his answer. 

/ I give you my bow./ 

The doubt seeped up his spine like witch-weirded sap, but he staunched its treacly up-pour with thoughts of that same golden morn. Too long apart, the lovers had allowed Legolas’ horse, Yewith, to amble along behind, as both rode stately Virgor. Pressed tight to Elrohir’s lazy back, with a nosefull of fragrant, tousled hair and half-cradling his fatigue-dizzy husband, the elf-knight had babbled endlessly on, the matter of which Legolas little remembered, as the images he had painted were only half-formed and the tales he had told often left unfinished. The melody of his sultry voice alone had been enough to woo his continued attention, the tone as light as ale froth and the cadence as buttery as Shire cream. He’d never heard that luring voice raised in anger against him, could not now imagine the horror of such a sound, or how he might bear its dreadful ringing through the cottage of their honey-time. 

Legolas would not have chosen such a place for their reckoning, but he would defer, in this as in everything, to his husband’s hush wisdom. He hoped this learnedness would keep him well, whether while Legolas was questing or in Mandos’ frigid halls. Though he doubted not the valor of his chosen quest, nor the worth of his humble Fellowship, none were certain of triumph, nor of their safe return. In a lonely two-month, he would depart for the blackest realm of this land, his only hope of survival the lessons of his husband’s care, bed, and battle skill. 

When he will ride down the plain of Gorgoroth, bow strung for slaughter and the heathen hordes in his sights, he will not cry ‘Death!’ as the fearless Rohan, nor ‘Victory!’ as the arrogant steward-sons of Gondor, but ‘Life!’ and ‘Home!’, but ‘Elf-knight! Star-Rider! Let your boundless heart hearken to me!’ He will call to Earendil above, for the beacon of his Silmaril’s light amid the smog and brimstone at the foot of Mount Doom, as he will slice through orc bellies with his slit-knives and will spill their bilious entrails on the rock face. When in that pit of merciless death he will pummel their skulls in and snap their gnarled spines with his bare archer’s hands, he will sing, across the slay-fields, to his nascent child, of the lilting trees of Greenwood the Great, of the lush hollows of Arda, of the life of peace he will lead and of his far-gone Ada’s boundless love. 

For he had finally known, in the breathless moment of his vow of fellowship, how dearly he loved his child. For this he had doubted most of all. Child and husband dearly both, and duty bound he would serve them. Gift them Arda hale and peaceful, if he could not live that life with them. 

If the Shadow would not spare him. 

**************

As the evening gave way to a crisp, starless twilight, Virgor trotted along the last of the frost-swept path, his rider grasping thatches of his billowy black hair to steady him. The silver bell slope of the cottage roof was already fringed with ice and laced with a spatter of snow, though the walk had been recently cleared. Through the obsidian glass of the window panes emanated the glow of the hearth fire, which beckoned weary Legolas towards the entrance when hesitation kept him aloft. 

After seeing to Virgor’s care in the small stable nearby, he crunched his way through the courtyard and hopped, like a jackrabbit, up the still-creaky wooden steps to announce himself. He need not have concerned himself with surprising Elrohir, for the comely peredhil, covered in little more than a velvetine sarong and slippers, waited, with a hairsbreadth smile, in the doorway. Legolas came under the tender lure of those resilient gray eyes and knew there would be no quarrel between them this night. Before drawing him into the cottage, Elrohir drew him, snow-dappled cloak and all, into an embrace so needful, so eloquent in its silent message that he could do naught but return the gesture force for force. 

“You’ve come,” his husband murmured into his collar, still unwilling to release him. “Then it is done.” 

“Indeed,” Legolas sighed, but could not say more. There were, after a journey’s worth of wandering and wondering, simply no proper words to tell him of it. 

“Are you settled within?” Elrohir inquired, slipping back somewhat to consider him. His eyes, placid as the Icebay of Forochel, regarded him with unsullied affection. “Readied and foresworn?” 

“I am,” Legolas stated plain, meeting those fjordic eyes with his own gemstone gaze. 

“Well, then,” the elf-knight smiled unabashedly, his noble features beaming with a trueheart’s boundless pride. “Let us leave the unfathomable future out in the cold. Come inside, maltaren-nin, and think of naught but indulgence.” 

Brushing a teasing kiss over his blue-tinged lips, Elrohir guided his beloved through the threshold and made swift business of shedding his ample cloak. As the remainder of his raiment suffered a similar fate, Legolas took in the homely comforts of the thoughtfully prepared room. The quiescent gloom was stayed by a panoply of bowl-hooded candles and pewter lanterns. In their midst, a fresh-sheeted bed waited-out the night’s promise. A handful of aloedil petals was spread across the doe-hide coverlet, as on their first visit within; their blooming scent merged with the faint wafts of paraffin to woo him close. Elrohir himself smelt of mist and of sea spray, of ederdown, from his sensuous raven hair to his sheathes of sinuously wrought skin. A stew warmed in the hearth, a steaming bath cooled in the corner, but suddenly Legolas would have none but his beloved’s sweetness to steal his mortal thoughts away from errantry, from questing, from fellowship, into ecstasy. 

None but his peerless elf-knight to take his pleasure with.

*****************************************

Coirë, Yen 3019, Third Age

Winter had not abated, as it should, since the dawning of the year. Though Vilya’s invisible aura staved off the intemperate winds and the glacial cold that hounded down from the Misty Mountains, even this one of the three elven rings could not force the Spring to burgeon through the snow-blanket, nor leaf buds to crack through branches cased in ice. A party of Rangers had brought word that the Golden Wood, despite its proximity to Dol Guldur, was not so beset as Imladris, but then Galadriel did not yet know of Arwen’s choice. 

While his Adar chose to weather his closely-veiled grief attending to the mortal woman Neyanna and his grandchild in her womb, Elladan doubted that the valley would still be so late-shroud if Elrond were at his fullest capacities. As spindly tendrils of frost crept over the window before him, so had the chill of mortality slowly sapped the Evenstar’s otherworldly brilliance, until her hands were cold to elven touch, too human to be clasped without regret. The daily dirge of waiting for word of the Fellowship became weeks of haunting the crypt-like halls, while Elrond doted over a child that wasn’t yet as a reprieve from mourning a child that would soon be no more. 

That morn, this dispirited existence had spent the last of the elf-warrior’s patience; his and Elrohir’s both, if truth be told. No longer would they sit idly by while their brother Estel faced the wolves of Mordor, no longer would their sister’s honor go unmatched by her warrior-brothers. No longer would Elladan sleepwalk through his nights in the Hall of Fire, sipping flask upon flask of miruvor, besting Erestor in yet another round of the Battle Game, as Glorfindel feigned interest in their begrudging rivalry and mounted yet another argument to present before inconclusive Elrond. Though, now faced with revealing the result of their campaigning to his ever-heart husband, Elladan almost wished he had not been so quick-witted in the face of his father’s reluctance. 

Almost. 

Turning from the now frost-bitted pane, he wondered at the tenor of Elrohir’s thoughts in the wake of their Adar’s permission to join the war effort. The elf-knight was gathered beside him on the window ledge, his gray eyes melancholy, yet settled within. Elladan knew not how effectively his twin managed to dismiss thoughts of Legolas, at large in the wilderness, though his hallowed diplomacy had been in full evidence since his beloved’s departure. There simply was no alternative to hope, the elf-warrior judged. He would have to recall that particular point later, when facing down Glorfindel’s withering, brokenhearted glare. 

“They have reached the Golden Wood,” Elrohir spoke suddenly, as if to the winter itself. “They will sleep beneath the mallorn bows tonight, in the cradle of the White Lady herself.” Then, as if he need explain his relief, Elrohir foist his quicksilver eyes upon him. “It is a comfort.” 

“She will suckle them,” Elladan acknowledged, clasping his solemn brother’s hands and surreptitiously taking the temperature of his flickering fea. The fingers and palms were hot with elven light; there was no need to fear of him fading. “Bequeath them with cryptic counsel and renew their fractured spirits through her mysteries.”

“Aye, she is nearly *too* wondrous, at times,” Elrohir smirked, recalling the many occasions on which their grandmother had given them strange counsel. “I await her timely predictions, when we shall soon be sheltered there.” 

With a snort, Elladan unwound his legs from the ledge and turned towards their father’s study. To his surprise, though not unaccustomed to such stealth from his dearest one, Glorfindel waited in the doorway. 

Himself caught unawares, the hard-won husband averted his gleaming eyes from the nostalgic scene; momentarily drawn back through time to snow-capped afternoons of old, when two over-eager elflings would press their noses against the glass and beg to be freed from their lessons. Glorfindel knew, then, that he would never again behold them thus, that the last of their innocence would be smote by the steaming carcasses strewn across the writhing fields of the Pelennor. Though the brethren themselves would return to him - or so, if the brothers were not parted, Elrond had foretold - the visions of sweet-cheeked elflings that would, at times, be reflected in a gesture, a wink, a glance, these would be lost before the Black Gates. Sauron’s wrath must have some claim on them. 

Better their youngling spirits than their immortal lives. 

“Espionage does not become you, Balrog-slayer,” Elladan teased, as he beckoned him forth. “Though the mist in your eyes tells of your remembrances.” His husband was, apparently, already far too keen as to his many moods. “What memory held you in its thrall? Might we recall it, as well.”

“No particular event, in truth, has been recollected,” he confessed, as Elladan drew him close. “I merely wondered what new memories might be forged in winters yet to come, with a new little elfling to peer through the frosted glass and pray to be dismissed from mapmaking.” 

“Mapmaking!!” Elladan protested. “We were never so dully occupied in winter, Glorfindel. You ever saved such slavish labor for summer, when Arwen would dance by the window fishing for butterflies.” Whether Elrohir laughed at this or at the thought of the little elfling to come, neither partner knew, but both were glad at his raised spirits. 

“Have you not considered, meleth,” Glorfindel remarked with affected sobriety. “That the lengthy task of mapmaking was kept for summer so that a guard-captain might finish his own chores and later frolic in the glades with his quick-sprouting elflings? There were only so many summers in your infancy, lirimaer, and I cherished every one.” He finished this declaration with a kiss so blithe and tender that Elrohir was soon on his feet, muttering hasty excuses and scurrying out into the hall, long-accustomed to Glorfindel’s more genteel overtures.

Their passion, however, was short-lived, as Elladan eased out of their embrace with a penitent look to his husband. 

“Neyanna has had word from her Dunedain kin,” he quietly explained. “They await us in Lorein. They will soon set off for Rohan, to meet with Aragorn and face Mordor in his charge. A small party will spirit her to Galadriel’s lair, where the White Lady will care and confine her. Elrohir rides along…alone.” 

Glorfindel raised an eyebrow in consternation. “You would forsake your twin, Elladan?” 

With an ageless sigh, Elladan considered: “I would not forsake him so. Yet I would cleave to my husband.”

Slow to reply, Glorfindel appraised the elf-warrior’s warm mirthil eyes, but met no reluctance therein. “He rides to Legolas. He would stand with him.” 

“He *will*.” 

“Your father has made his wishes plain.” 

“He has.” 

Glorfindel slipped delicately from his husband’s arms, ambled over to the hearth. Haloed by the fire’s glow but his noble face in shadow, he whispered: “T’was I who so counseled Elrond. Not your husband, melethron-nin, but the guard-captain in his charge and the Balrog-slayer that lives out his second lifetime here. I alone know of Gondolin’s fall, so I uniquely know of the stakes being played out to the South, their unruly nature and their visceral consequence. Though I am struck to the soul at the thought of your sundering, I long to see new elflings whimpering at the window pane and would have the well-lessoned elflings of old find their most deserved glory. How can two of Arda’s most hallowed and relentless warriors be kept aloft in the Rivendell valley, when the bloodiest war their kinsmen have ever known rages to its zenith? For you are not merely of elven ancestry, but are cousins to the race of men and to the proud Dunedain. You are Peredhil sons, soldiers pure, and you must make your stand.” His voice broke, then, but he swallowed it down as easily as oarberry juice. “Though my husband’s heart would hold you here, and will hold you ever-dear, my Elladan.” 

Gentle arms threaded around his torso. The hot press against his back twinned with the blazing hearth before him, as Glorfindel was enveloped by the soothing heat of his mate’s soul-fire. 

“The end of our struggle may encroach, meleth,” Elladan assuaged him. “But our togetherness will know no end. Either we will linger here in Arda, or the Shadow will best us both and we will wait out our time in Mandos. In a hidden alcove of those static halls, I will laze my head in your lap and you will brush your sharp-shooter’s fingers through my hair. We will wait out the centuries so entwined, our souls alight with memories of our golden time, until Mandos sees fit to release us anew and we will reunite with our betters in Valinor. This is no end to us, maltaren-nin. Either to the vile Shadow or to Arda’s bounty, but our love is immortal as the Valar above.”

With a soft prayer to those guiding spirits, Glorfindel turned from the callow flames and sunk himself into his brave one’s dread-blighting embrace. 

 

End of Part Two


	3. Lovers

Part Three

Tuilë, Yen 3019, Third Age

The fairest day they’d seen since taking leave of Imladris so many long weeks ago sank into the horizon as a maid into her evening bath. Burnished golds, copper-toned vermillions, and clouds swollen pink as pig-bellies painted the sky beyond the dusky mountains, the Fords of Isen gradually dwarfing down to the cleaver-blunt peaks of the Westfold. Though the brisk wind still braised their cheeks ruddy, laced as it was with soot and ash, Legolas caught a lingering wisp of ederwood between blinding gusts and was heartened. 

He thought, not for the first time that day, but perhaps for the last, of Elrohir. 

Not twenty yards from the Gap of Rohan, long grass had sprouted, distracting their weary steeds and slowing their advance some. /We must rest a night at the Hornburg/, Legolas thought to himself, but was reluctant to propose such to Aragorn. As the lone elf among them and with a taciturn dwarf to answer to, he felt the burden of his people’s repute for supernatural strength and prowess. He could not, of course, demonstrate the slightest fear, the barest hesitation, lest the men loose heart. If the pride of elven archers gave way to grief, sorrow, or despair, then how would they themselves fare against the Shadow? 

How could he tell the indefatigable dwarf that the endless sea of rock and stone make him weep for Greenwood glades? How could he plague the dreams of the valiant, yet sheltered Rohan warriors with tales of Dol Guldur? How could he rally an awkward throng of Theoden’s adolescent sons, when the slaughter at the Battle of the Hornburg edified even him in its grime and gore? There was but one to whom he could confess himself, of the black recesses of sleep he would not dare descend into, of the bittering of his mercurial spirit in the face of such savagery, of the choking terror that kept vigil within. 

One who lately slept beneath a doe-hide coverlet, imagining the war’s bucolic aftermath. Yet how could he return to Rivendell’s splendor, when his dreams were mired in orc’s blood? 

An encroaching party of riders breached the Gap behind; at the horn’s groan, Legolas snapped to attention, his bow already strung. His eagle eye picked out its mark, a flame-haired ruffian to the left of the leader, who presently dismounted his horse and ambled towards Eomer. With subtle, yet ready adjustments, the tip of the master archer’s arrow traced his progress, conscious thought giving way to sheer, vital instinct. Until, that is, the man snorted. 

Legolas knew him. Indeed, when Theoden ordered their arms down and Aragorn himself embraced the coarse man, he realized he knew them all, these Rangers of the Northern Realms, come to fight in Gondor and regain their lost kingdom. With a wry smile, the Silvan elf near-scoffed at the resulting displays of affection, as two bands of brute horsemen abandoned their steeds and embraced as long-lost lovers might. Legolas loomed above them, still and distant, unable to loose the scent of ederwood now grown fierce, as if he’d passed the day-long perched upon a hearty tree-bow. 

The dwarf’s lowly grunt, surely a sign of impeding mischief, rumbled behind. 

“These Rangers are trouble enough,” he grumbled pointedly. “But what’s this I spy that follows? More elves!!” Legolas didn’t flinch, though his glacial stare grew stealthy as it searched the company. “Though these at least had sense enough to blend among the others.” 

Legolas fixed his mellowed gaze on two gray-cloaked riders to the rear, both with drawn hoods. At once, the woodland scent overpowered him, until his throat scratched strangely and his temples stung. These ailments, however, were little bother to him, once the hidden riders removed their hoods and revealed themselves to be a sight for sore, disbelieving eyes. 

The full-throttle force of this revelation nearly knocked him from his horse. 

Across a barren field, between titanic fords, in a place so bleak and cold only the most ragged of peoples called it home, Legolas looked across a pity-army of pyre-hearts and met the quicksilver eyes of his beloved. 

Home, it seemed, had found him even here.

***********************************

As the merry hobbits skipped across table-tops, the yeomen belched, the ale flowed free, the smoke hung blue and sickly below the horse-headed columns, the effulgent hearth crackled with alacrity, and the grog-drenched soldiers howled out yet another slurred chorus, Elrohir surveyed the swooning room with a hawkish glare. Encamped by the fire with Aragorn, Eomer, and some Dunedain nobility, Elladan seemed unrepentantly in his element among the roughshod Rohan and their compatriots. On such a night, Elrohir himself felt no such compunction. 

Pinned to his barstool by his husband’s rapacious stare from across the hall, Elrohir held fast to long-practiced elven reserve, though Legolas’ unforgiving eyes writ an eight-part elegy of longing and of desire across his searing skin. The archer feigned an eager audience, along with some others, before the blustering dwarf, but those piercing blue eyes had not relented their assault for hours. Elrohir knew, by the ankle-tucked feet beneath his seat and the widening span of his legs, that the only clothed table in the hall had not been so randomly chosen. 

Legolas adjusted his hips and pressed forward. Though his face remained poised and somewhat pinched, his incandescent eyes glowed wild in the firelight. The barest hint of a flush tinged his cheeks, not from embarrassment, but from the exertion of restraint. When he surreptitiously dropped a hand into his lap, his lids drooped suggestively, the sleek muscles of his throat contracted, and he finished the movement off by a flick of his tongue. None but those searching for it would have noticed the errant hand settle back atop the dark blue cloth and calmly entwined with its mate, the fingers glistening as if slicked with hog fat. 

When that rapturous gaze caught him anew, Elrohir shuddered within. 

They had not spoke, not with words, not once since his arrival. The company’s pace for the remainder of the journey discouraged conversation, the course set by impatient Theoden moments after their silent reunion. Once at the Hornburg, Aragorn dragged Elladan and him immediately into private council; therein, the nascent king murmuring a veiled caution against even the most gentle displays of affection between two males in the thick of battle-hard Rohan. Few among the race of men admitted to such practices, most outwardly frowned upon them. Though the nature of elfkind was mysterious and beautiful to them, the men were fraught, frayed in the aftermath of their recent battle, anxious for the charge to yet come. This was not the time to test their morality. 

Yet his husband was similarly wrought; thinned by hard-living and disheartened by fortune. Though none of human eyes could perceive the flickering of his soul-flame, Elrohir knew that a mere night of their togetherness could set him ablaze for the entire battle to come, in mind, in body, and in spirit. Elrohir was the archer’s balm, his succor and his sage. With such a revivified ally beside him, Mordor itself would crawl from the new-come King of Gondor, when it would not flee for its wounds. To add to the challenge of a stolen encounter, only Theoden kept private quarters at the Hornburg. There was no creep, stall, or dungeon to conceal them, not even the caves beyond were inhospitable to the Edoran exiles. 

By the heady luminescence of Legolas’ eyes, Elrohir inwardly mused, propriety may not last-out the night. 

With a swoop and a soft smile, the Lady Eowyn landed at his side. 

“Why do you not join your brother at revels?” she queried of him. “Surely your twinship would easily best Lord Aragorn and Eomer at the Battle Game.”

“Forgive me, m’Lady, but you mistake me for a guard-captain,” he humbly replied. “I wear the mantle of fine-honed diplomacy. I care little for the shifting of forces southward, though I will gladly ride along. My interests lie in the intricacies of government and of rule.” 

“Would you have your own kingdom, then?” she giggled, amused at his candor. 

“I would prefer a forest,” Elrohir indulged her. “Some keen builders, a quiver of archers, and a river running through.”

“You are far from home,” she acknowledged, with no little sympathy. “Far from kindred and your familiar kind. Yet your brother keeps with the bravehearts, Legolas will not quit the dwarf, and you sit here alone.” When Elrohir could find no answer for her, she pressed on. “Legolas will hail you, if you are lonely. In truth, his stare has haunted your countenance since the herald of Evensong.” 

Elrohir could not stay the smile that lit him, though he kept his tongue well enough. 

“I feared there might be quarrel between you,” she admitted, her curiosity piqued. “His gaze is relentless!!” 

“It is a game,” Elrohir deflected, with a glance upwards at Legolas’ impassioned eyes. “A ruse, of sorts. We are long acquainted.” Eowyn, doubly intrigued, closely observed them. 

“If I were so regarded by a friend,” she whispered. “I would beg his favor.” 

“I hold his favor well,” Elrohir responded playfully, turning back to meet her moon-face. 

“He looks fit to flay you,” she admonished. 

“Nay,” Elrohir dismissed, then sighed. He examined her round, delicate features, and knew her then for a tenderheart. “We are bonded, m’Lady.” 

“Blood brothers, then?” she questioned, knowing there was some fault in her reasoning. 

“We are sworn, but not as warriors or brothers,” he confessed, somewhat bashful at the telling of it. “We are… mates.” At her gasp, he further elaborated. “He is my husband.” 

After a brief time of astonishment, Eowyn daintily closed her gaping mouth and gave the matter her full consideration. Never once, to Elrohir’s relief, did she seem either alarmed or revolted. Instead, she clasped his hands between her own and beamed resplendently at him, such that Elrohir thought all the mate-less men in the hall must be blind to let her be. 

“There is a chamber by the east turret,” she began. “It belonged to Theodred. The King will not allow any to lie there, though were are cramped into the caves. But Theoden is tonight alive with mirth and will sleep soon and soundly. None but I will know if you take rest there.” 

“I am heartened by your gesture, m’Lady,” Elrohir answered, with visible regret. “But I cannot sully a fallen prince’s chambers with-”

“Nonsense,” she dismissed, with the steel of a swordmaiden. “Theodred and I have many a time sullied, as you say, the very same chamber in secret. None will discover you. And I daresay my fallen prince would be… charmed… by the idea of vowed lovers warming his over-frosted bed.” 

He regarded her then, this flint-eyed doe of a girl, with a look some might mistake for a wrong-headed favor. He gathered her hands and kissed them soundly, before she pulled him towards the eastern hall. 

With a wink over his shoulder, Legolas was on his feet. 

*******************8

No sooner had Elrohir thanked Eowyn with a stately bow and crept into the dormant chamber, than he found himself slammed against the rear of the door by an armful of ardent, lust-quaking archer. His lips were parted and plundered with equal fervor, skilled tongue questing forth, sensuous, thrilling. Sure fingers creased over the front of his violet tunic, tracing every ridge of his ribs, the taut meat of his pectorals, then thumbed his peaked nipples through the rough fabric. 

“Too long,” Legolas mewled, as he rubbed their flushed faces together. “Too long away…” 

His breaths were ragged, nearly fitful, as his bowman’s hands ripped through the binds of the elf-knight’s tunic and he tugged the garment over his head, finishing the gesture with another desperate kiss. He soon just as forcefully divested himself of his own raiment, until they were both bare and bold, not a scrap of cloth between their wrought, sweaty bodies. 

Legolas’ skin, gleaming as veil of fine tulle in the stark moonlight, seared to the touch; the lithe length of flesh scorched as it stroked against him. When his own was again claimed by that molten mouth and their hips mercilessly ground, Elrohir had his fill of such mindless mastery. He deftly flipped them around until Legolas was held aloft against the door, panting and wicked-eyed. The kiss Elrohir tamed him with was just as lush and heady, but soulful also. Though he could not for long keep himself from luxuriating in the feel of his husband’s silken skin, he chose to suckle the lissome slope of his neck. 

Legolas groaned, keened, too far gone for these more delicate sensualities. He had born witness to butchery, to seething hate, to an altogether different form of ravagement. He wanted to grind and bite and writhe and score his nails across Elrohir’s ivory back till he drew blood. He wanted to be brutally taken by the one who broached no brutality in bed-play, who never so much as plucked a hair from his golden head in all their years of lovemaking. When Elrohir finally took him in hand and teased the swollen length of him, he cried out as if singed by a hot iron. 

“*Saes*, Elrohir,” he begged his lover. “Take me!” 

“Nay, meleth-nin,” Elrohir chided gently, as Legolas began to shake. 

The archer viciously shook his head, couldn’t quite catch his breath, but when Elrohir smoothed tender lips over his soft mouth and laved a saucy tongue, like a mountain cat, over his own, he tempered some. Soon, Elrohir’s scarlet touch was everywhere around him; up his thighs and down his back, across the plain of his stomach and over the nape of his neck, pillow soft support at the base of his spine and worried circles of luring pleasure over his still-heaving chest. Legolas felt blanketed in a downy cloth of his husband’s tender weaving, wrapped tight in his embrace yet his desire loosed by his skillful touch. 

When at last Elrohir kneeled before him and lapped the length of his engorgement, Legolas struggled to blink the moisture away from his teeming eyes, all while wrapped in ecstasy’s thrall. Only then did Elrohir allow his fervor to alight, relishing this too-brief intimacy, sucking like a wanton and savoring, when the moment came, his beloved’s tart essence. Fever-wrecked, Legolas collapsed into his arms, jewel eyes streaming yet needful as ever for his husband’s restoring kiss. They rested there awhile, a mess of limbs and sheathes of feathery hair, until the chill of night descended. 

Elrohir led a rather bewildered Legolas over to the bed, the very fact of sheets and pillows and covers to burrow in such a treasure to them. Twined together like two leaves close on the ivy vine, Elrohir stroked his dear one’s back as Legolas recounted the many horrors he’d seen since their last togetherness, of the bravery, of the cruelty, and of the unbearable sadness. 

It was thus that Legolas spent himself of heartache, and it was a gentled elf he lay with. 

*****************************************

Amidst the cloud-thick climes of the mineral baths, three elven shadows moved as if weightless, their indigo-hued robes billowing as wraiths. For a brief moment, their ombrous forms evaporated from the foggy cavern, only to reappear awhile later, hair unbound and slender bodies bare. Each readied himself for the simmering waters by standing in the eye of the steam gusts. Once their wintered skin was suitably flush, they waded into the brimming basin, hoping the swells would relieve the wait-weary tension in their bones and their intimacies would replenish their cleaving hearts. 

Each had their torch to bear, each their heart to buoy with hollow reassurances, each was a beacon to another, far adrift. Erestor knew the overspill of evil at Dol Guldur would soon threaten Haldir at Lorien. Elrond was triply burdened; he fretted over Arwen’s paling, over his twins’ safe return, and over the impending birth of his grandchild, also in the tarnishing Golden Wood. Despite his daily assurances that Elladan was, indeed, well and hale, Glorfindel had been plagued by memory-wrought nightmares of strife from his former life: of Gondolin’s sacking and crumbling, of his renown battle with the Balrog, of his death. As much as the solider of old supported Elladan’s action, the husband was wrecked with fear that his mate would not return whole, if he indeed returned. 

As the three wise elders swam over to the whirling pool and seated themselves on the ledge generously beneath the surface, each inwardly vowed to dismiss his sorrows for the duration of their unctuous soak. 

“I sung a litany to Iluvatar, ere I departed,” Erestor informed them. “Let us speak only of peace’s reckoning.” 

“Aye, of a new age,” Glorfindel seconded. “How can we fight for a future that has not yet been imagined?” 

“Well reasoned,” Elrond acknowledged, though this did little to lighten his mood. “And what of your future, Erestor? What canvass of dreams would you weave before us?” 

With a tremulous sigh, Erestor considered this. 

“Though these be mere musings,” he began. “I would not the tides of probable fate be wholly forgotten. If peace comes to Arda as herald to a Fourth Age, Galadriel will likely retreat from the Golden Wood and sail across the sea. Haldir would follow her thence and I, with him. The Age of Men is upon us and I long to be in the berth of my makers.”

“I am similarly wistful for a softer time,” Elrond agreed, the creases of time evident on his preternaturally handsome face. “Though my daughter’s choice keeps me mindful of departing too soon for the West, I have perhaps seen too many sorrows to further bear her fading. The soothing bow of Celebrian’s arms nightly calls me home, this promise more luring, far more troubling than the sea’s patient call. I have come to fear that… that my heart may not survive Arwen’s passing.”

“Yet the twins will certainly linger some,” Erestor ventured. “Cross over at the latest hour, with Legolas and… and yourself, Glorfindel?” 

“Indeed,” he assented. “I will remain with Elladan as long as needed, which may yet be many years. Valinor’s tranquil shores will be challenge enough for two warriors as we, best delay such arduous contentment until the last.” Both darkling elves chuckled fondly at his admission, conjuring all-too-easily visions of the life to come. “But think you, Elrond, that Thranduil will come along, once the Greenwood is great again?” 

“I might ask the same of you, dear ambassador,” Elrond threw back. “You are far more keen to his scattershot ways than I, whom he loathes.” 

Further mirth stayed the guard-captain’s tongue some, until he admitted: “I believe that he may very well remain, if only to distort and pervert our legends.” 

“Think you he would outlast Legolas’ tarrying?” Erestor queried. 

“If only for spite.” Elrond allowed himself a chaste smile, though he and Glorfindel were long agreed as to the mad king’s reasons for alienating his youngest son. “Though I wonder if, in his final hour, he might not see the self-made manner of his soul’s undoing and give sway to a ravaging regret. Perhaps not over Legolas’ loss, but at his ignorance of his unknown grandchild.” 

“You judge, then, that he will never know the child,” Glorfindel asked, though he had answered the question for himself long ago. 

“I regret, for the child, that he or she will know him only through scorn and prideful tales,” Elrond admonished. “Though I myself will tell them of Thranduil’s valor, if other will but blacken his name.” Just then, a flicker of joy lit the Imladrian Lord’s solemn features. “I will gather my littlest one close and share the secrets of the ages.”

“The child will be fair as Arien above,” Erestor noted, heartened by his friend’s eagerness. “If blessed with half his golden father’s countenance and a scrap of his grace.” 

“Aye, the babe will be favored,” Glorfindel murmured, a touch of melancholy in his tone. 

“Come now, Balrog-slayer,” Erestor chided. “You are never one to brood.” 

“Might your bond-brother’s fecundity have roused a similar wanting in your restless spirit, Glorfindel?” Elrond teased him. 

“Perhaps,” came the vague reply. When each other peaked a disbelieving eyebrow, he forced an answer to ready itself. “In faith, I have not, unlike Elrohir, long-desired to parent a child. Though, now that Legolas and Elrohir await such a blessing, I admit to some… some introspection, on the matter. I fear, however, neither Elladan nor I would be able to… to taint our union, even to such a bountiful end.” 

“Elladan could not bear the waiting on such an action,” Erestor considered. “But he has the strength of a thousand truehearts. He could certainly perform it, if convinced of your need. Of the blessings you would reap and the love you would bear his child.” 

At this proposition, Glorfindel’s eyes grew wistful, beading with unshed tears. Elrond, marking his unspoken desire that events thusly unfold, further sweetened the pot. 

“Indeed, on this, I must caution you,” Elrond advised him. “You might bequeath a child of your seed a legacy of black dreams and a sense of never-ending dread. A father’s spirit nourishes its child from the moment of its begetting. There’s no telling what unearthly phantoms a resurrected soul might pass on. Elladan would be the wiser choice of sire, and, once his brother’s child seduces him, a willing participant in conception.” 

“This from the proud grandsire of Thranduil’s ilk,” Glorfindel quipped, to mask his longing. Other than Elladan’s safe return from the war, the begetting of a child was quick becoming his fondest wish for their future togetherness. “Better a child of *your* line, you say, Elrond?”

“A child of good health, from whichever line, is my hope for all my many sons,” Elrond concluded, unprovoked by his taunting. 

“Add in their future prosperity and the salvation of Arda,” Glorfindel improved. “And we are in full agreement, *Adar*.” 

With this stout proclamation, the three retreated to their inner thoughts and further assuaged their anxious spirits. 

****************************

Elrohir, listless and sated, poured over his husband as if an unctuous bowl of cream and seeped himself into his clefts and hollows, his face clotted in the crook of his neck. When Legolas had been emptied of his ire and his sadness had evaporated through the constancy of Elrohir’s regard, sleep had proved a feeble master. They had loved the night through, hotly and tenderly, in the near-dark of Theodred’s forgotten chamber. 

This last coupling had limber Elrohir astride his fugue-headed husband; the latter had been caught in the thrall of a peerless rapture, as the darkling elf rose and eased himself onto him, undulating as if in the sweep of a long sigh. Engrossed by the meticulous deepening of his impalement, Elrohir had withdrawn himself with the same languorous grace as he had descended, the grip of pleasure so acute that he hadn’t even needed to moan. Eyes shut in besotted concentration, tongue poised on his teeth as if awaiting a caress, with each slow penetration, he had purred resplendently. 

Legolas had born this sensual assault as a long, luring soak in a steaming mineral bath, his half-lidded eyes entranced by Elrohir’s slow dance above him. As he had been drawn ever-deeper into his beloved’s glutinous heat, the viscous warmth had raised through him like a lava flow, until every limb, every muscle, every bone had simmered with bliss. When at last, with an impassioned groan, he had erupted, Legolas had been surprised to find himself doused with ample spurts of Elrohir’s singeing seed, their spending, as their souls, as one. 

Longly had they lain together in Theodred’s dank, lantern-less chamber, only the cinder-glow embers of the recent, still raging battle-fires beyond the slit-windows as illumination. Their breaths, heavy with moisture from the damp morn and the looming caves, were conversation enough between such longtime lovers; though Legolas, noting that Elrohir did not sleep, eventually thought better of their silent contentment. 

“Our son is restless.” 

Elrohir stilled, as if replaying the words to suss out their intended meaning, then his head sprung up. From the cool argent of his eyes, Legolas felt the prick of his curiosity and how he fought to withhold its sting. 

“Our *son*?” he questioned, as if inquiring after a misplaced cup of tea. For the first time in many months, Legolas evidenced in their private quarters the barest hint of his renown mischievous nature. 

“Neyanna presently lies beneath the lone willow in Lorien,” he elaborated, with studied patience. “He senses our presence there. The heady vapors of our loving have for years nourished the comely tree and, now, it coddles our young one. The rustling leaves whisper our legend to him, as they glide over his sleeping mother’s womb.” 

“How… how may you…?” Elrohir asked, his throat rasped by this affecting image.

“He sings to me, through the ether,” Legolas explained, in a hush. “A voice of such aching sweetness that I might weep the day-long were its timbre not so heartening. It was thus that I knew him of my seed, by this sunrise lark’s song. In early days, I knew not what spirit beckoned me so, until Neyanna confessed herself and I discovered him. As his form grows fuller, the song grows fainter. Now, only in the wake of our passion can I make out the lonely melody.” 

“He… he is lonely?” Elrohir queried, with no little apprehension. His silver eyes glistened with sympathy for their child, so new yet faced with such consequence.

“He knows not where we have gone,” Legolas further elucidated. “Where *I* have gone. He hearkens to his mother, but it is the heat of our elven spirits that warm him in his waiting. He knows me as his sire, longs for me to… to sing to him.” Legolas takes a breath, overcome by the speaking of such a secret, and changes tact. “He longs for you as well, meleth.”

“He knows me?” Elrohir gasped, a faint pride blushing his cheeks. 

“Aye,” Legolas continued. “He names you Ada. He brooks little confusion between us, merely strikes a different chord when singing of one or the other. Mine… mine is the more solemn tone, yet pure as the flow of a mountain spring. Yours is low and blithe, like the last breath of summer through the forest glades. He feels your absence keenly. He struggles, at times, to meet your heart in the otherness… and has therefore grown restless. He would be born!!” 

“I would that he be born, to hear of him,” Elrohir sighed, awed by this revelation. “Yet I would he tarry some, so I might be there to cradle him. Will you tell him of this?” 

“I oft have,” Legolas assured him, finally letting a smile bless his gentle features. “But he is, alas, his father’s child.” 

Despite Legolas’ teasing tone, Elrohir fell quiet awhile. As the archer’s worn fingers raked through his hair, he digested this unexpected news.

“It was for this you turned away from my loving,” he ventured, with slight hesitation. As Legolas was finally cheered some, he was loathe to somber him. “You would not have him know of your shame, or our togetherness, before he had first heard my own heart’s song and loved me for his own.” 

“I sometimes reflect on who between us is truly the finer archer,” Legolas mused good-naturedly. “I admit no design to my purpose. When first our little one beckoned me from the beyond I… I spoke naught of your regard, for I was not sure if, with my revelation of infidelity, I would still be so cherished. When you forgave me so readily, so unabashedly… I could not conscience such acceptance. I hid, from your love, from his knowing of my transgression. To bear the burden of my quest, I required… a bleakness of spirit. Sobriety.”

Elrohir sighed his displeasure, but tightened his embrace. “In belief you are ever an elf of Mirkwood, maltaren-nin, though you broke with its mad king.” 

“Prince of Mirkwood, Silvan elf, or forlorn exile,” Legolas dismissed. “There are but few titles I hold dear. Husband. Father. Beloved.” 

By this time, the far wall was awash, roseate in the aurora. The cuffed clomps of the squires echoed from the courtyard below; the horses would soon be readied and their packs weighted with supplies. Already the rattle of chain-mail vests sounded through the corridors, the resounding clank of armor portage and of sword-hilts on polished shields. The day was waking, and with it came the call of war. Soon the Great Horn would bellow through the Deeping Walls, they would ride out, with their sword-brothers, to reign or to ruin. 

Legolas slid down to face his hush lover, stealing another draught from his soft, sensuous mouth. 

“The dawn will not wait,” he murmured, with resignation. “Yet I would love you again, before morn.” 

“I would be loved,” Elrohir responded, his playfulness returned. “Before morn and after yon.” 

“You are ever-loved, my beauteous Star-Rider,” Legolas vowed. 

*******************************

Citadel of Minas Tirith, Yen 3019, Third Age

At the order of his dismissal, Elladan teetered on the cusp of collapse, but could not yet give credence to his exhaustion. Instead, he abandoned his sword in the midst of the Golden Hall and lurched towards the door. As he shuffled, each step more taxing than the last, through the exit and down a torch-lit passage, he spied Legolas tuck in to Elrohir’s side and the two take leave for their loving. He knew that they would love before sleeping, despite the immovable weight of their fatigue, as none who’d faced the bloody waste of the Pelennor could do other to shake that hellish image. 

With his desperation for the solace of the sacred hall came motion, with continued motion came an easing of his aching legs. Mired in oily orc blood and still striped with gore, Elladan fought to dismiss the battle-flashes that plagued him. A catapulted stone crushing a crescent of men as thoughtlessly as their houses behind. Horsemen splayed and pinned to the ground by a stake, their steeds gutted for sport. Babes gone limp in their mothers’ arms, mothers childless in a blind instant; children scurrying from firing hordes into gulfs of flame, preferring to be burned than bludgeoned. A soldier chose to chance his life, but these innocents made no such pact with fate and with skill, though their deaths would be honored as kings were. 

If his mother’s torture had taught him the guiltless tenor of evil, the ravagement of these humble city dwellers taught him of its futility: Sauron sought power for power’s sake alone. He would not even have a people to enslave, just a solitary wasteland of rubble and fuming pyres. What was Arda without its splendor? Why sunder the very land whose bounty you seek? The answer, he feared, would forever elude such as he, so he strove to quit this circular reasoning and focus on his waning steps. 

No sooner did he stagger into the center of the sacred hall, than Elladan found he stood before an enormous statue of his Adar. Rather, his beleaguered mind reminded him, a magnificent stone rendering of Elros, his father’s twin and first King of Men. Yet the mirror-sharp likeness to Elrond at once heartened his dispirited son, so that he tottered the few last steps to the base of the statue and fell to his knees before it. 

“Ada,” he whispered, his words still echoing through the quiescent hall, if not through the ether. “We are whole. Elrohir and Legolas take sanctuary in the dead Steward’s chamber and I will soon follow them into the night. Naught is ended, but we have won back the Pelennor. Your sons are unharmed… and I your child long for your succor, Ada.” 

Unbidden, Elladan began to weep. 

As the tears struck his grimed cheeks, he could again smell the steaming guts of the dragon-beast he’d disemboweled, taste the foul spray of its sick-green, acrid blood. Never had he been assaulted by such a stench in his misery, his revulsion served to temper him. Elladan knew he had not seen the last of such ungodly creatures, nor of the skeletal Nazgul that rode them. His husband, however, had ample cause to be proud of him, as he had stared into that black hole of a hood and beheaded his winged beast, leaving the surest thrust of his fat-bellied sword for its rider’s invisible eyes. He had seen a yellow-braided Rohirrim stab the skull of the Witch-King of Angmar just moments before, and had thought little, when faced by such seething hate, of stealing the move to smite this one. 

After absently swiping his smeared face with his sleeve, Elladan inhaled a chest-ballooning breath and measured out his exhalation. He bowed his head forward, letting his limbs grow lax, then grow light, as he released his cares into the thickening ether. He drifted into the otherworld as a reed over river swells; effortlessly, after such precipitous distress, flowing into the spirit he sought out. In truth, his recent skulk through the Paths of the Dead had solidified his soul-link to Glorfindel, who, though centered in the conscious world, lost some of his essence at Mandos, as all who haunt the halls do. None other, however, had returned to mark this.

As Glorfindel’s warmth enveloped him, Elladan sank to the ground and curled himself into the rapt sensation, so very needful of his husband’s care. 

/ I feel the hush of night that surrounds you,/ the elf-warrior told his beloved. /The giddy trees waiting on springtime in the vale, their burgeoning bows and their sap-drunk trunks. You stroll in… the orchard. An owl hovers near. The breeze is chill, but fair-scented, where I am rank./ 

/You are hale,/ Glorfindel insisted. /Though you might have bathed./

/If I had bathed,/ Elladan countered, heartened by his teasing tone. /Your desire would be piqued. I’d not find any rest before morn. You’d woo me with your singeing flame and your hot words, until all thoughts of battle, strategy, and honor had been raised from my overheated mind in your wake./ 

/Would such relief truly be so terrible on such a night?/ Glorfindel wondered, sensing both his exhaustion and its dreadful cause. /How have you weathered the war, meleth-nin?/

/I have weathered it,/ Elladan half-answered, reluctant to remind himself of the heinous battlefield. /The Shadow has retreated to Mordor, though not for long. We will soon ride for the Black Gates, though Elessar would take council in the morn./ 

/The King of Gondor is returned, then,/ Glorfindel remarked. 

Elladan could sense his contentment, but also his concern. As much for its release as his own encouragement, he let the day’s bleak images come to him, allowing his beloved the most poignant account possible of all the savagery he had seen, all the darkness he had known. Only when Glorfindel’s memories of Gondolin reared themselves, did he ebb the black flow. 

Gondolin, Elladan acutely perceived, for all its devastation did not compare to this. Even bedeviled elves could not be so cruel.

Silence reigned for a long while, both lovers hearkening to the sanctuary of their united souls. Soon, however, even the fact of Glorfindel’s afterlife could not maintain the strength of their bond, the ethereal twine of their link began to fray. Sending a last surge of cleansing heat through the ether, Glorfindel embraced his beloved’s fraught spirit, his ease in parting secured by the small relief he knew he had provided him. Elladan, in turn, let the fire of his soul swell with love, as both mates murmured reassurances to the other and again pledged their devotion. 

When his fatigue snapped the final strings of their bond and Glorfindel breathed his last, lush sigh against his cheek, Elladan spread himself across the floor of the sacred house, then peered up, with leaden eyes, into the serene face of his Ada’s twin. 

Knowing himself safe beneath his watchful gaze, he slept. 

 

End of Part Three


	4. Sons

Part Four

Minas Tirith, Yen 3019, Third Age

Though Legolas had risen before the dawn, there would be no sun to light the morn, as there had been no luminous elen to allay the bitter, fuming night. From a balcony on the eastern front of the Citadel, he watched ruefully as the ominous cast of black-charred clouds was stoked by the cindering ruin of Sauron’s infernal county. Somewhere amidst the lava-spills, the scythe-rocks, and the coarse sands of Mordor, two hobbits bore a deadly charge, yet Legolas envied them the clarity of their purpose. The heaviness of his own dilemma on this day that would not dawn was not so purely wrong, nor of valorous righteousness, but flawed, selfish, its proper resolution yet obscured. 

The hydra-headed choice loomed, as the Shadow’s hissing vow, before him. 

Without the giving light of Earendil’s ever-constant beacon, Elrohir had slept fitfully. Despite hours – nay, a crown’s worth of nights - of the most impassioned coupling Legolas had ever known between them, no sweep of his touch nor murmured endearment could settle his tight husband in this perpetual midnight, though his wound-weariness had eventually won him. With the blessed advent of Elrohir’s slumber, Legolas had found himself similarly fraught. He’d made an early rise, drawn, out of a warrior’s blood-sick curiosity, to the view: the city’s crumbled battlements far below, the outstretch of the ravaged Pelennor and the hellfire beyond. Yet Legolas needed no silmaril to engulf the sheer fire of his /fea/. A fool’s hope might crackle therein, but there it was sparked. His faith in their victory was akin to that of Elrohir’s ever-constant love; the hearty hobbits would reach the precipice and sunder the Ring, their army would befoul the Shadow’s horn-headed hounds, and Arda would survive this over-shroud morning. Somewhere, amidst the froth-mouthed fiends, he would keep hold of his life and live on to parent his child. 

Yet the few dreams bequeathed to him foretold another fate for his beloved.

The scuttle of bare feet on cold stone broke his contemplation, as bruise-blotted arms wove around him. Ignorant, purposefully so, of the desolation before them, a groggy elf-knight purred his greetings into the neck of his husband’s leaning spine. Legolas brushed grateful hands over his, but did not turn to embrace him. Thusly alerted to his strange reticence, Elrohir forced himself to fully rouse and slipped in beside him, against the rail. His mellow argent eyes were for his lover alone. Casting aside encroaching darkness, the creeping Shadow, and even a warrior’s honor, Elrohir tucked a stray wisp of cornsilk hair behind his ear, then caressed the length of the leaf-shaped lobe. Legolas allowed himself a faint smile, but kept his indigo-deep eyes aloft. 

“When I dreamt, these last hours in your arms, I dreamt of my youth,” Legolas spoke unheeded. “I never longed, as some, for the rule of love, yet I have known more of its thrall than most. I wanted none of love’s subjection, only the empowerment of true coupling with another of equal conscience. When first I learned of our betrothal, the newness of this circumstance did not provoke me, but my soul’s long knowing of it. I needed not to be told, but to be reminded.” He clasped Elrohir’s hands in his and kissed them, but still kept his eyes away. “Before you came, I knew not what strength lay within me, and after you had come and gone, I too sharply learned the jagged edges of a world without your heart. When last in Mirkwood, even my father’s house was barren of feeling, not for his deed, but because I thought I had returned to the withered land on the outskirts of your regard. Were there no Ithil nor Arien, were there no Greenwood, Imladris, Arda, or Valinor, as long as there was an Elrohir I would press on. I would fight. I would suffer. I would hope.” At last he turned to him, the despair in his incandescent eyes raising. “The beatific light of your soul-flame will forever beckon me forth, melethron. Without you I am but a litter of ash, a creature of gristle and frail bone, crutched and ragged. If your all-forgiving grace forgets this world, then there is no world and I have no heart!”

“Legolas…” Elrohir barely breathed out, he was so overcome by his husband’s words. 

“You must retreat, Elrohir,” Legolas near-growled, such was his fervor. “You shall not fall!! The Shadow may have the bravest of our company, but I will not watch you burned by its wrath. You must escape to Lorien, save yourself with our child. I beg you!! I have lost father, brother, and many a kinsmen to Sauron’s blackness, but I will not lose my mate!!” Even as the elf-knight’s rapt arms enveloped him, he bleated on. “I will not be without the one who wooed my green heart beneath the willow. The one who succored me even in absence, the one who gave himself weeks before our binding, the one whose counsel I hold above all others, the one who never once flinched at the knowing of my destined quest, the one who welcomed me home a betrayer…” 

“Hush, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir whispered into those flaxen sheathes of hair. “If my council is so well-hallowed, then will you heed me now?” After a long, treacle-throated sigh, Legolas assented. The piercing ardor of his blue eyes had gentled to wide, if troubled, pools. “If I am so cherished as you claim, then there is no space in your heart for such… understandable trepidation. There is no dawn to rouse our beleaguered spirits, so you are forgiven if a brief chill shivers your resolve. But mine is set. I will fight at my brother’s side. I will slay. And we will prevail, this day. If I am the elf of your sweet tribute and you are the beholder of my rabid heart, then let the heathens come.” With a tenderness that belied his bold words, Elrohir cupped his soft-skinned lover’s face in his palms and blessed his mouth with a blithe kiss. 

“Let them dare scrape at the steel shell of our love. They will be blinded by its mithril sheen and broken on its blunt side.” 

Their glinting eyes locked in vital accordance, Legolas dared himself a smirk.

*********************

They poured up the slope like a rash of dung beetles, the sickly yellow cast of the eye of Barad-dur reflected on their onyx carapaces. Beneath this battered armor oozed their snot-smeared skin, their foaming jaws, gnarled snouts, and the glazed beads of their eyes testament to their fiendish accord with the Dark One. Elladan might pity them, if their stench were not so acrid, if their spikes were not so sharp, if they for one second sought his mercy. They were primal, vicious, and rank; their famished hordes surrounded him so that he’d lost sight of all other, Elrohir once a swirl of raven hair beneath a swinging axe, now consumed by the fray. 

As he gouged, maimed, and severed, he imagined that he saved each slithering fiend, spared them Sauron’s reckoning. He knew not what manner of after-death an orc fell to, merely that each was wholly deserving of obliteration and that he was keen to send them off. The smoke-spread sky above rumbled and brooded, Elladan smelt the greasy, viscous rain that threatened, though it little differed from the bloodsport fields around him, where infantry and Shadowspawn lay as somnambulant brothers. 

With a snarl worthy of a voracious warg, he ripped a second sword from a Dunedain carcass and swung wild, mincing the attacking throng into a ruinous pulp of viscera. Showered an oily obsidian by the blood spray, Elladan sped through the mass assault waged against him, more heads toppling in his wake than from a guillotine. Fever-wrecked and drenched through, he grappled up a corrugated rock without use of his glove-stripped hands, desperate for a moment’s reprieve. Across the writhing plain he spied his valiant twin, shooting his quiver’s worth of arrows to save a spare breath. In the distance, Legolas’ slit-knives mauled an over-toppled mumakil with a terrible rage, until he heard Eomer’s strangled cry and dove off to his rescue. He marked each of his swordbrothers in turn: Mithrandir reborn and Peregrin, Eowyn and tiny Meriadoc, Faramir, Imrahil, and stout-hearted Gimli. He met the immolating stare of the All-Seeing Eye atop Barad-dur, and knew this was the end of all. 

Suddenly, the earth shook such that Elladan was unseated, then tossed into the mire below. The deepest crevasses of ground rung like a gong. As he staggered over the quaking land, he could think only of his brother. The bedeviled orcs had paused their assault, equally fearful of being swallowed down into the cracks of this brimstone soil, which gave Elladan swift, if unstable passage to his startled twin, who could not quite muster a smile at the sight of him. With a silent nod of greeting, Elladan sheathed his sword and snatched up his hand. If the end had come they would fall as they had sprung forth: two parts of one flesh, two souls sired by the same timely seed. As the field around them seized, he hugged his brother close; searching the company, as he was, for Legolas. There was, however, no mane of star-hewn gold shining amidst the soot and stone, no silver bow glinting in the sallow green glow. 

The cry of eagles sounded above. The end was not upon them after all. 

Mithrandir’s booming, prophetic voice thundered across the heathen plain. “The realm of Sauron is ended!!” 

Elrohir sputtered, then coughed, the nape of his neck soon slick with tears. As the orcs around them collapsed, combusted, or fled in cowardice, he watched the tower crash. His bone-weary brother slumped against him, his rasping breaths settling some when Elladan lowered them down onto a flat-topped rock. After a quiet moment, Elrohir rallied, fussing onto a seat beside his humbled twin and taking the measure of his appearance. Satisfied, he looked about as hawkishly as the eagles might, though the one he sought remained missing. 

With a sigh of encroaching despair, Elladan noticed the sky. A spring-soft wind breezed past, dissipating the smog-clouds and clearing way for the stars. Soon, as both of the brethren shone their quicksilver eyes up, the ethereal light of the silmaril beamed forth from the west. Their grimed faces lit by their grandsire’s radiance, the twins became quite easy to find. 

A streak as brilliant, and as blindsiding, as the silmaril above soon swept Elrohir up in its arms. 

“We must rejoice, melethron!” Legolas crowed, with unabashed glee. “Our son is born!”

*******************

Summer, Yen 3019, Third Age

There were few sights as peerless in their awe and majesty as the ride to Minas Tirith. The White City’s magnificence could move even one as ageless and journeyed as he. Elrohir had often wondered, in these times that leant themselves to serenity, if Valinor herself could match the splendor of this fabled path, which every mortal in Arda longed one day to barrel down. Though their company cantered, rather than barreled, across the last of the Pelennor towards the tactfully restored gates, the elf-knight felt a quickening within, both at the view before him and the thought of who awaited him there. 

A snortle sounded from within the cloth tightly bound around his torso. Tiny fingers, yet of bracing grip, tugged his attention downward, where eyes of shimmering aqua blue demanded his regard. When the wind-worried wisps of his golden hair tickled over peach-ripe cheeks, the baby trilled with elation, as if some trick of his father’s delighted him. He kicked fitfully at the scarf that bound them, but Elrohir quickly stayed him with a click of his tongue. The eager child’s body brimmed with energy restrained; though he was yet an infant, the little one had the vivacity of one twice his brief months of life. 

“Patience, pen-tathar,” Elrohir soothed him. “We are approaching the gate. Ada-Las will soon be with us.” Once breached, however, no heart-swollen archer awaited behind the grated doors. Was it possible his husband could not sense the imminent arrival of their son? 

“The court awaits your party at the Citadel,” a guard informed Elrond behind, as Elladan threw him a reassuring glance. The guard received, for his trouble, a satisfactory chirp from the babe, who had wormed his way into an upright position against his father’s shoulder. The company chuckled fondly, by now long-familiar with the new one’s inherent frivolity. The son, it seemed, even at such an early age would rival the father in mirth and in mischief. 

As the horses grappled up the cobbled streets, both twins observed the child’s wide-eyed wonder. Though he would soon forget this first exposure to the White City, they themselves would long remember his curious visage as he took in the alabaster domes, tight passages, and poe-faced people that lined its streets, as he first beheld the Citadel’s grandeur. If his grasp dug deeper into Elrohir’s garments, if his face burrowed further into his neck as they approached the summit, the proud father did not chide him, but only gathered him close to his rapid-fire heart. 

The babe was not the only one anxious for their family’s reunion.

Elladan, astride a tawny-hide, white-maned Rohiric steed named Belfas, screwed his noble visage into a cross-eyed clown, to which the little one giggled, the overwhelming city forgotten in an instant. Glorfindel’s horse soon caught up to their other side; to Elrohir’s utter shock the Balrog-slayer likewise engaged the child in merriment. The baby swung giddily from one side to the other, his small body hampered, but not daunted, either by the cloth binding or by his own lack of ready control. When, as they approached the upper shelf of the mountain, Glorfindel fell back and Elladan sobered, he reached over his father’s shoulder in distress and nearly fell from his perch.

/Legolas’s son, indeed,/ Elrohir mused inwardly, as he snuck a kiss from his young one’s temple. 

The child, enchanted all over again with his stately father, squealed. 

********************

Atop the plateau in the Citadel’s resplendent courtyard, Legolas twitched. 

Indeed, he veritably quaked, as the Cormallen field had beneath them when the Shadow fell, in anticipation. Fisting his hands into the satin fabric of his formal jacket, he struggled to compose his up-curling features. Though he knew how unbecoming such behavior was to an elf of his stature, he could not for the life of him help himself. A reunion with his husband after two long months of separation, the incipient first meeting with his baby son – already three months old! Legolas had yet to reap of the peacetime’s bounty, so Valar forgive him if he was a mite unsightly in manner. Further down the receiving line, Aragorn was somehow stilled by the sanctity of his office; Legolas could not comprehend how, mere moments from his first sight of Arwen since the Fellowship’s leave-taking from Imladris, he could carry himself with such poise. A former Ranger of the North, at that! 

Truly, the title had overly burdened him. 

At last, the flag-bearer trotted up the path and onto the white-pebbled gravel of the courtyard. Legolas hissed out his breath when the extended company rode forth; how many banner-carrying courtiers, truly, did one lady require, even one as ethereal as the Evenstar? Finally, her principal escort rode into view, Elladan on a comely new horse and, beside, handsome Elrohir. 

When blue gemstone eyes beamed down from within the folds of a twisted purple cloth, to meet his own matching pair, Legolas could no longer keep countenance. As Elrohir carefully dismounted, he sped to their side; the elf-knight barely had his feet on the ground when touch-hungry arms enveloped him and he met the quenching kiss of his lover. 

A squeak of protest sounded between them, Legolas laughed heartily against his lips. His mirth turned to astonishment, however, when Elrohir eased him away and uncloaked their cheery babe. The darkling elf was hard-pressed to judge which face was the most wondrously struck at the sight of the other, though Legolas had grown strangely solemn. His brimming eyes regarded his son with such tenderness, such gentility that his spore-swamps-of-Mirkwood hewn archer seemed suddenly as delicately rendered as an ederwood bloom. He treated the babe with similar delicacy, ghosting his lissome fingers over his downy head, but not yet daring to touch him. Only when the little one smiled, with uncommon reverence, did Legolas himself dare close his mouth. 

“Mae govannen, nin pen-ind,” the golden elf finally greeted him. “I have longed to make your acquaintance.” 

Once Legolas spoke, the child reared in amazement. To both fathers’ surprise, their son sung a soft note; somber, as once described, yet pure as the flow of a mountain spring. As the haunting chord resonated through the sterile peaks that surrounded them, Legolas gasped, twin rivulets of tears streaking down his pale cheeks. 

“He knows me,” the archer whispered, more to himself than to his family. His trepidation forgotten, Legolas scooped his baby son into his arms and hugged him close. Further tears were shed as he held the young one, the heat of his tiny body suffusing him with boundless warmth. 

Elrohir, for his part, nearly glowed with pride. “I should perhaps have forewarned you, meleth. Our pen-tathar sings to all he meets, each familiar known by their own proper note. After careful observation, I eventually discerned that he, himself, also bears a note, the tone of its ringing in accordance with his desires.” The child, after adjusting himself to the hold of the more slender of his fathers, wasted no time in perusing the silken texture of his Ada-Las’ very fine, very fun to tangle flaxen hair. 

“And are the young master’s desires plentiful?” Legolas teased, his playfulness returned and his tears soon wiped away. 

“You will soon discover them for yourself,” Elrohir predicted with a dry laugh, as he had only recently become acclimated to the relentless demands of fatherhood. He was happy, other than to simply be with his husband again, to share these joys and frustrations with him. “Will he not, tathrelasse?” As if to prove his Ada-Hir’s point, the baby yanked at one of Legolas’ braids. 

“You will find, gwador,” Elladan smirked, as he strolled over. “That you will come to favor, as we, the Rohirric manner of plaiting.” Elladan nipped his nephew’s nose, then patted his bond-brother paternally on the back. “A sturdy plait it is, reluctant to dislodge despite the most vigorous tugging.” 

“I take your meaning,” Legolas nodded as he winced, the little one’s grip terribly solid. Elladan tickled the child’s plump tummy and, giggling, he released his hold. Despite himself, Legolas nearly sighed with relief.

“He is nimble,” Elladan noted. “He will make a fine archer… That is, if he ever come to be named.” 

“Your accuracy is humbling, gwanur,” Elrohir shot back at him. “Are you not weary from the road? Have you not some mock-begetting of your own to accomplish hence?” 

With a potent wink, Elladan bowed to them both and sauntered off to join waiting Glorfindel. The entire party save they themselves had by this time ventured inside. 

“Have you not named him, Elrohir?” Legolas questioned injuriously, concerned that his son existed without ennoblement until this very day. 

“Is it not a father’s privilege?” Elrohir softly replied. “We had not agreed…” 

“You are his father same as I,” Legolas insisted, inwardly deciding whether to be heartened that he had not decided without him or distressed at his insensitivity. The child of two noble houses needed a carefully chosen title, as well as a mere name. Little wonder the babe sung himself by note. “But nay, we had not agreed. Or truly considered the matter, until now.”

With the young one now quietly settled against him, Legolas wove his free arm around his husband’s waist and allowed his open shoulder to be similarly occupied. They ambled over to the sapling tree, the courtyard’s centerpiece and the only sign of the natural world at the Citadel. Both Elrohir and the baby sunk further into Legolas’ embrace, feeding off and flowing with the affection emanating from within. Finally reunited with his dear family, Legolas was loathe to speak, but his son would not be named in silence.

“What of Earendil?” he tentatively proposed. 

“I had considered Oropher,” Elrohir countered. “Or Ecthelion or Feanor… but he is his own soul. I would not burden him with the wrongs or the rights of our houses. A new age of elves dawns with the time of men. He is beholden only to himself and should be thusly named.” 

“How did you call him earlier?” Legolas asked. “Your endearment to him…?”

“Pen-tathar,” Elrohir reminded him. “I have taken somewhat to the appellation. I recall when first you spoke of him, beneath the willow in his mother’s womb, where our shared life and love has so often come to fruition, where the trees whispered to him.” 

“*Tathren*,” Legolas suggested, already pleased by the sound. “What think you, meleth?” 

“Beautiful,” Elrohir remarked. “As is the child you have begotten us, maltaren-nin. I fear I’ll need thank you each and every day for your misjudgment. I must commend this betrayal as the most plentiful I have ever had the good fortune to suffer.” He brushed a kiss over his sleepy-eyed baby’s brow, then met his husband’s mouth with a more sensuous caress. “Are you not in accordance, Tathren-nin?” 

To their never-ending surprise, the baby snortled in agreement, before giving sway to sleep.

****************************************

As he sank further into the unctuous waters of the bath, Elladan purred from pure contentment. Though traveling without constant threat of Shadow proved one of the more genial pleasures of the coming age, the road from Edoras had not been without challenge, chiefly that of caring for the spritely babe in their company. The merry child now met with his awed Adar and their state-dinner mercifully brief, the once-warriors were finally free to take their plentiful ease. Knowing his peredhil brother’s love of the long-soak, the King had generously provided a tub large enough to accommodate Elladan and his mate. 

If said Golden Flower could be plucked from the window sill. 

“I never thought to see the White City so tranquil,” Glorfindel commented, with suitable distraction. “The restorations have bettered its design. The dwarf has clearly had his day.” 

With a soft chuckle, Elladan allowed the fluid mercury of his eyes to pour over his husband’s bare, bold form, clothed only in a diaphanous sarong yet coiled with tension. The silken sheathes of his sun-kissed hair hung loose over his slender shoulders, its bristled ends framing the taut muscles of his chest. Though still sinuously wrung, his body had lost considerable weight, whether through worry or war-time rations, Elladan refused to contemplate. Instead, he set his sights on luring him down into the hot, frothy waters.

“Do you mark the excavation, by the south wall?” Elladan noted. “Torches encircle the cleaved ground. Arwen would essay a garden, there. I’m to send roots, when returned to Rivendell.” 

“An elven touch,” Glorfindel ruminated, his furrowed brow considering this eventuality. “What Gondor never knew it wanted.” Elladan laughed sharply at this, drawing his too-serious husband’s attention. “You are cheerful, Elladan.” 

“And you are ponderous for such a blessed time, meleth-nin,” the young husband chided, with hush affection. “What captivating cornice keeps you yearning at the window, when your measure of our bath is waiting?” 

Glorfindel sighed, unable to admit the cause of his reluctance, perhaps even to himself. His gray-hewn gaze drifted out, beyond the spires of the Citadel, to the fallow land in the far distance; where once was Mordor. The still-steaming fields of rock and stone too keenly recalled another lonesome vale, where once his kinsmen’s ashes were scattered by a bedeviled wind. By now, the overgrown valley would bear no trace of their existence, of their cares, of their courage, of the lives they so eagerly sacrificed. What would become of Mordor? Would, through the waves of time, Sauron’s wrath be forgotten and evil again come to fester within this soot-seeded land, within the souls of its unforgiving people? 

From his soothing water-seat, Elladan harrumphed with Elrondian frustration. Since their journey south had begun, Glorfindel had been strangely caught in the fugue of memory, as if disbelieving of the peacetime’s advent. He waited on some further dark force, some unforeseen enemy, when Elladan understood quite well that the true warrior’s enemy was complacence. Before the war’s end, he had predicted his own dispirited nature, his feelings of uselessness in a more gentle age, but, to his surprise, they had not come. Months had passed since he’d strung a long-bow, cleaned his bloodied sword, or overtaxed his horse, but not for a moment’s sake did he miss these tasks, busied as he was with other cares. 

The forlorn manner of his husband, for example.

Though more than a few judged his patience lacking, Elladan was not an inconsiderate elf. He had marked, with a bowman’s acuity, the tenderness of Glorfindel’s regard when he beheld their cherubic nephew, the prideful visage which instructed Elrohir in the finer points of his care. While his own Adar was merely entranced beyond rapture with this new creature, he knew enough of parenting to let Elrohir follow his instincts. Glorfindel had been less careful of his remarks, which had admittedly little-bothered the new father, but were damning evidence, Elladan had been sure, of his own secret desires. The ghosts of Gondolin he nightly summoned only further echoed the truth of his somber mood, Glorfindel wanted not a lordship, but a legacy. 

Why else had he been reborn to this world, with the battle now ended and the enemy vanquished, but to find a mate and to build himself a family? With no threat to hinder him and a hallowed mate at his side, his mind staved off the inevitable disheartening by conjuring the blackest moments of his existence before his weary eyes. Countless times in these past months Elladan had cause to observe his husband’s quiescent suffering, unable to give him cause to hope. He had, after all, just recently survived the most vicious war of their time. Surely he, of many others, had justly taken time to heal. 

On this dulcet evening, however, with his family reunited, his sister promised, and his brother beaming, he had cause to reconsider his position on breeding, love, and legacy. 

“How long have Ada’s eyes been so bright?” Elladan delicately questioned his husband. Glorfindel again tore his stare from fallen lands and bid him audience. “Flecked with silver and their rich color paled?” 

“I… I confess, I had not marked them,” Glorfindel exhaled, with solemnity. Seeing the matter of some concern to his uncharacteristically patient beloved, he rose from his perch and crossed the room. Shedding his sarong without a care, he waited on his answer, before stepping into the bath. 

“He will not be long for Arda,” Elladan estimated. “He will wait-out the Shirelings, perhaps, with Mithrandir, before sailing West. I wonder if he will see Arwen again, after this long stay.” 

“Would such a choice dishearten you, meleth?” Glorfindel inquired, his attention instantly focused on Elladan’s concerns, as he, in turn, sank into the silken waters. He was, despite his brooding, ever the peerless companion. 

“Quite the reverse,” Elladan insisted. “I fear, if forced to make too many partings, Ada may fade. I too well remember the time of Nana’s grief and its grip on him. He would be with her again.” He fell silent a moment, choosing his next words as Elrohir might. “I will be named, shortly, as Lord of Imladris.” 

Glorfindel, a seasoned diplomat, barely flinched. “And Elrohir?”

“Estel would entitle Legolas, for his service and brotherhood,” Elladan explained. “The colony of Mirkwood elves may move south, to Ithilien. There is little place, even in Rivendell, for them to flourish, as they must for survival’s sake. Elrohir and Legolas would divide their time between Ithilien and Imladris… he could not be Lord and so long absent. Besides, he little cares for titles, though he will have ample say in matters of government, at our home and in the new settlement. His skills will come to plentiful use, fret not.” 

A longtime guardian’s prideful smile overcame his gloom, as Glorfindel clasped his husband’s hands and kissed them. “Have you need of a chief counselor?” 

“Ambitious, are we?” he teased sweetly. 

“Terribly,” he mused, suddenly heavy with fatigue. Glorfindel groaned to himself, then sighed. He waded over to the other end of the bath, eager to entwine himself in the warmth of his beloved’s lissome frame, future Lord of Imladris or no. 

“I fear, in the throes of my new capacities, I may come to long for besiegement,” Elladan ruefully acknowledged against a damp temple in desperate need of a caress. “The challenges of peacetime may come to overthrow this simple warrior’s heart.” 

“You are far too cunning, lirimaer,” Glorfindel murmured into his neck. “Your stealth is renown.” 

“Indeed,” Elladan came to whisper, as his lips traced a sensuous path across his cheek and up his ear. A lap at the peak sent shivers through the mellowed Balrog-slayer. “I may, once settled in my office, allow myself to be persuaded into siring a child or two.” Glorfindel stilled. When questing fingers found the slope of his opposite ear, he sprung up to face his bemused mate’s luminous silver eyes. “If my action is in accordance with your own desires, melethron.” 

“In *accordance*,” Glorfindel nearly scoffed, unable to too soon give in to his rising, impossible joy. “You would… you would d-do this…?” 

“Only with your blessing, maltaren-nin,” Elladan insisted, serious on this point alone. “If you could not forgive the manner of their begetting, I would not risk it.” 

“For such bounty, I would risk…” Glorfindel trailed off, thinking better of the sentiment behind his words. He struggled vainly to compose himself, nearly ashamed of his sensitivity on this issue. “I have come to long for… I greatly wish for…” 

“Hush, melethron,” Elladan soothed him, drawing him into a heady embrace. “I know well of your desires. Though you have some decades to console yourself to the idea, as it would not become the new Lord of Imladris to sire a child with other than his mate within the first years of his rule. Best allow those that remain to know of our love, of the strength of our binding, before we try their trust with the weirded begetting of our children.” 

Sobered by his husband’s reasoning, Glorfindel signaled his agreement to this concession. “We will long consider the rather vital choice of naneth. The ellyth in question must be… a rare pearl.” 

“For certes, if she is to weather my fumblings,” Elladan jested, happy to see this quip elicit a smile from his beloved. “I believe some dwarven wine may be called for.” 

At this, Glorfindel could do naught but shake his head, astounded and heartened by his husband’s brave resolve. He well recalled the last instance in which Elladan had consumed dwarven wine, as well as its disastrous consequences. That he would volunteer to do so again, despite his own bleak memories of the affair, was awesome and deeply affecting. 

The future Lord of Imladris was truly his heart’s mate. 

**********************************************

Lairë, Yen 40, Fourth Age

Imladris, the Last Homely House

At the third toe-curling shriek, Tathren leapt from his bow-shaped bed and dressed hastily. Some intrigue was afoot in the stately halls of this, his second Ada’s home, and he would not wait-out the roseate dawn to discover it. The call of adventure was rarely sounded between the sage peaks of this too-complacent valley; if the spine-braising cries of the ellyth in question did not herald such a call, then Tathren was no warrior’s son. 

With nimble fingers, he swiftly braided his golden hair in a single plait, then encircled the tail in a broad strip of black leather. His earth-toned tunic and breeches deftly hidden beneath his bed for just such an instance, were it not for the moonlight aura around the crown of his head, he would be nearly invisible. As it was, he would need rely on the shrewd lessons of his Ada-Las to skulk around the compound undetected. 

When a trickle of fitful sobs echoed forth from the Halls of Healing, Tathren knew his course. As he stalked along the dusk-shroud corridors of the family wing, he noted that the doors to both his Ada’s and his uncles’ chambers were minutely ajar, not a candle left glowing within. This was not their custom, some grave matter must have called them so thoughtlessly forth. 

With a twinge of glee at his good fortune, Tathren broke into a cautious run. 

Like a beacon in the night, the Healing Halls blazed with light, caused, no doubt, by the raging hearth at its center. Wondering at the need for such a fire as the first embers of morn reached over the horizon, Tathren streaked through the yard as if sailing on the wind. Fleet-footed, he snuck through the brush that encircled the domed edifice, slid down the leaf-strewn rail of the stairs to gain momentum, and vaulted up to the second-floor. He easily slipped his slender adolescent’s frame through the irons that enclosed the balcony, which led, always unlocked, to the healer’s alcove. Erestor’s study did not much impress him; he moved swiftly through the stacks of books, crackling the open-paged tomes in his haste. 

None would heed this disturbance, what with the clamor below. Easing his lithe form, now quivering with anticipation, through a slit of the study door and onto the landing, he immediately crawled up the quite useful engravings, into the rafters. The Healing Hall had a domed ceiling, after all, but the walls of the various chambers within could not be buttressed on air. The smaller rooms were therefore held by a series of fat beams, upon which the discerning and agile elfling could easily spy on his betters, or, more precisely, the ‘trials’ they needlessly sought to protect him from. Positioned above what he judged to be the heat of the action, though mindful of the white-hot brick of the nearby chimney, Tathren settled himself into the joint of two sturdy logs and peered down at the scene. 

His Ada-Hir loomed by the hearth, as was his way when considering matters of grave import, though he struggled to stifle a thoroughly bemused smirk. Ada-Fin, as he’d come to endear both his beloved uncles, was gathered sagely into an armchair, seemingly fussing over a bundle of cloth. Ada-Dan paced as to dig a trough in the floor tiles, his manner fearfully unhinged, though neither of his companions paid him much mind, other than his Ada’s aforementioned bemusement. From the surgery beyond, the cries has dulled to relentless whimpers, as though a wounded animal were caged within. A strange business, this.

And what other mischief abounded here? Upon closer inspection, Ada-Fin wielded not a blanket, but a cow’s udder, drained and fashioned as sieve of sorts… but for what purpose? Why was Ada-Dan so furious, while his husband seemed so calm, indeed nearly oblivious to the goings on around him? Why was his own Ada-Hir even present? As Tathren further puzzled out this bizarre circumstance, a perplexing, unfamiliar noise, akin to a mewl, sounded from within Glorfindel’s arms. The elder elf clipped the end of the udder, plunked the attached bladder into a waiting bowl, and beamed down at the… *aiya*! 

His Ada-Fin held an elfling!!

In his hurry to stifle his own shriek, Tathren bit down hard on his tongue. As any true warrior should, he swallowed back both his yelps and the blood, too stunned by the unbelievable sight below to keep his befuddled stare too long away. Though he had never before seen a baby elfling – and with few memories of his own elflinghood (that, truth be told, had not yet quite ended), Tathren was immediately certain of two major points: first, that this was a newborn babe, and most confusing, that this was the child of his two uncles. Even if the scene before him revealed only assumptions, the resulting spark of his fea told him the truth of it. 

Dismissing the frustration he felt at not being told of the imminence of its birth, let alone its very existence, Tathren examined this new, and much longed-for, companion of his. The pearlescent sheen of his skin proved him the son of Ada-Dan, as Ada-Fin was of a more golden complexion. His fine silver hair was peculiar, however, as none of the Noldor or Sindar he knew possessed such ethereal coloring. Coupled with the crystal blue of his eyes, he was a child of immaculate starlight. 

Tathren knew, in that moment, they would be as brothers. 

Turning from the spitting hearth, his Ada-Hir then regarded his twin with amused compassion. 

“Elladan,” he chided softly. “Will you not quiet some? You’ll only further fray your… rather tenuous hold on patience with this...” Elrohir could not be generous nor gentle, so he left off. 

“Aye, meleth,” Glorfindel beckoned him. “It has been hours since you’ve held the little one. He would know his sire’s warmth.” As if in agreement, the babe began to gurgle sweetly. 

Elladan glared at the immovable doors of the surgery, but relented his pace. With a growling sigh, he burrowed down into the armchair beside his husband, wove his arms about them both, and regarded his newborn son with mellowed brow. 

“He is the picture of Naneth,” he remarked, his restraint still evident. “Is it not strange that he should bear her colors in the very age of their extinction, gwanur?” 

“He sparkles as the silmaril above,” Elrohir complimented, drawing near. “He will be comely fair.” 

“You are starshine itself, Cuthalion,” Elladan murmured, as he caught hold of a tiny hand. “Yet why does your brother tarry so?” As if unimpressed with this line of questioning, the elfling yawned mightily and promptly fell asleep, causing his two fathers to coo with unrestrained affection. 

“You have oft told of his shyness,” Glorfindel proposed. “Perhaps he is merely too timid to yet meet the world.” 

“He best overcome this manner soon,” Elladan mused darkly. “Else he may not be long for it.” Glorfindel paled considerably at this suggestion, while Elrohir tisked at his twin’s inconsiderate response. “Three hours have passed in waiting, maltaren-nin. I fear…” 

“Perhaps you should sing to him,” Glorfindel suggested, unable to digest any alternative to his son’s safe advent into the world. “You and Elrohir both. He will hear the tenor of your voices and be heartened.”

“An excellent proposal,” Elrohir seconded, grasping his twin by the arm and tugging him to his feet. Before Elladan could think to voice an objection, Elrohir knocked at the imposing doors. 

Erestor soon answered, and could think of no reason to dismiss them. 

Above, Tathren crept about the huge beams, anxious to witness an actual birth! Though there were no rafters above the surgery itself, there was an open space where the central beam met the wall, enough to poke his head through. The sight that met him, when this was accomplished, almost caused him to loose his footing. An unknown ellyth, certainly of Noldor heritage yet her autumnal colors suggesting Dorian descent, lay depleted across a cot by the other side of the hearthfire, her skin ghostly and her distress palpable. Blood and other violet viscera slicked her outstretched legs, bulbous belly, and the sodden space between, which Tathren avoided out of respect, if not outright revulsion. 

The brethren, to their credit, paid her state little mind as they flanked her, each taking an arm and soothing her brow. Midwives waited by the fire, boiling linens, while Erestor, his apron splashed with gore, examined her again. Suddenly, a tremor seized her middle, shaking the loose belly as if infested. The ellyth screamed as if she’d been disemboweled. 

Tathren looked on, fascinated. 

“Not long now,” Erestor judged sagely, nodding to the twins. “Let’s give him some encouragement, shall we?” 

The brothers placed their free hands on the quaking womb, then, with touching eloquence, they struck a low, resonant note. As their voices raised, beckoning the young one, the ellyth fought to sing with them, not wanting her child to be born amidst her howls. Soon, as her stomach bucketed furiously, they found an immaculate harmony, so blithe, so culling, that Tathren’s throat clenched. 

Just as Erestor ordered her to push, a curlicued whistle sounded behind him. A familiar sound; Tathren knew, to his horror, that he’d been discovered. After scaling down the bisecting wall, he came face to face with a rather impressed, though scowling, Glorfindel. Tathren, as ever, could not keep his usual, mischievous gleam from his eyes, not could he long hold them aloft of the babe before him. With unabashed wonder, he tip-toed towards the now reluctantly accepting Balrog-slayer and gaped wondrously at his magnificent new cousin. 

“I see that, in all things, Ion shall inevitably surpass Adar,” he concluded, with no little amusement. “Well played, Tathren Legolassion.” 

“Hannon le, Ada-Fin,” he grinned sheepishly, knowing when to bow as well as when to break rank. As he reached out to touch the baby’s fine silver hair, a cry of an altogether different tenor broke from the surgery behind. 

Glorfindel’s soft countenance became brilliant with joy, as he whispered to the child in his arms: “What think you, Cuthalion? Shall we go meet your brother?” 

It was Tathren, however, who nodded his assent vigorously, unthinking until the last moment of how his own Ada-Hir might feel of his presence. Too late for warning was he ushered into the surgery, where the midwives washed the writhing babe. The ellyth had fallen into a long, exhausted sleep on the cot, while Elladan, Elrohir, and Erestor conferred darkly by the fire, awaiting the newborn with disheartening concern. Glorfindel’s own beaming smile was smote by their tense faces, even Cuthalion began to fuss. The atmosphere was so grave that Elrohir tucked his son under his arm without reproach or greeting, as Glorfindel joined their company. None dared speak until the midwives had bathed and wrapped the child, who was hushly presented to Elladan. 

All then saw the meat of the matter, as the child, though similarly pale, had the thick raven hair of the brethren. They were not, by any measure, identical twins. 

“But I heard their song!!” Elladan exclaimed, his face fraught. “Twin voices clearly beckoned through the ether… how can this be, if I only sired one babe?” 

At this terrible utterance, Tathren gasped. 

“How now?” Erestor queried, an altogether different form of astonishment alighting his face. “Not their sire? What mischief is this you speak, Elladan? There can be no other Adar to these children.” 

“But he is so dark,” Glorfindel insisted, with greater hold on reason. “Though, I must confess, this second one is without question a child of your seed, melethron.” These last words he barely breathed out, so damning were they for the babe in his arms. Elladan, as if in acknowledgment of this, accepted the proffered infant, not wanting his real son to wait on him. He gentled some as he beheld this shy one, so delicately rendered as if by glass-spinning. 

“Calm yourselves, my fretful fathers,” Erestor had to laugh. “Glorfindel has struck the right chord, but he does not mark its melody.” Four pairs of thoroughly bereft eyes struck him like a blow. He laughed again, despite himself. “Among the Dunedain, twins are not always identically fashioned. Identical twins are of one seed, which then somehow splits in two. These others are no less twins, merely begot of two separate seeds in one conception. As you are peredhil, Elladan… I imagine you are not immune to such an occurrence, though it is a first among elfkind. The light of the Valar upon you both, one might venture.” 

With huge sighs of relief, the beset fathers embraced their dear ones, then saved a tender caress for each other. Even Tathren merited a squeeze from his Ada-Hir, who he knew, in such heartfelt moments, woefully missed his own husband, tending as he was to a matter in far away Ithilien. As Glorfindel expounded on the Gondolian provenance of Echoriath, the darkling child’s name, Tathren found his attention swinging from one elfling to the next. Both held their allures; he hoped they would come to be dear to him. 

As the company quieted into a hush reverence, Elladan hummed a rather poignant melody to comfort his disquieted son, who had wasted no time burying his face in the folds of his Ada’s tunic and continued to fuss. The song, coupled with Elladan’s kisses, blanketed the timid one with love, until he at last released the tunic and dared to look about. 

“Is this also one of the Valar’s blessings?” Tathren asked a soon confounded audience. 

“After what do you inquire, pen-tathar?” Elrohir questioned. 

“Look for yourselves,” Tathren responded, to his elders continued confusion. 

Until, that is, Echoriath, blessed of bounteous Elbereth, dared open his golden eyes. 

*********************************

Yavië, Yen 122, Fourth Age

Ithilien, Home of the Wood Elves of Sindar

The wind whipped fierce as a lash across the desolate Pelennor, until they came to the river. Wild gusts, moist and seething as warg’s breath, swept across the yellowed grass of the tundra, hailing the crisp autumnal season, the waiting winter. Far behind, the Citadel spires shone, a peerless streak of white against the bleak sky, as blasts from Mithrandir’s wand against the flying Nazgul. Where once they’d raced across the plain as if the wolves of Mordor were at their heels, now they rode, as hearty travelers might, though their hearts were full with remembrance: of their questing youth, of their stand against the Shadow, of their peacetime lives. 

Their man-brother was now the King of legend, their sister cold, shroud by the once-Golden Wood. They had, with a whisper, passed on.

Astride one of Virgor’s many foals, Elrohir took his last glance back at Minas Tirith; at Rohan and Lorien and Imladris far away. He felt as if he could see every valley, every mountain, every stream and hollow, ever tree beneath which they’d lain and every willow for which his son was named. This was his last view of the only land he’d every known, his heart felt flayed and gutted. Flanked by his brother, Elladan, who wept, and Glorfindel, who could not come to tare his eyes away, he questioned their choice to depart, but knew naught but greater sorrow would come of their staying. 

With a boyish grin that became the man, the King, he was, Eldarion embraced each one with a ruler’s resolve. The death of his parents had marked him; no longer did his cherub’s smile meet his flinty eyes, nor his manner betray ought but his title. Elrohir thought he perhaps longed for their going, for in their eyes a mother’s spark was mirrored, a father’s teasing pride lingered. In this regard, Elrohir was glad of their imminent departure; after burying their sister, he could not lay to rest another cherished one, not on this shore, where he had been so dearly loved. 

With a bow of deference, the King’s company knelt, as the brethren and the Balrog-slayer crossed the bridge.

Riding, as their forbears, into legend.

**********************

Tathren and Cuthalion met with their party but steps into the forest vale, jubilant at the return of their respective Adar. The silver sprite, thirty years past his first majority and in full bloom, trailed behind his fair cousin like a squire to a knight, painfully eager to learn of the golden elf’s magic touch. Child of Elladan’s valor and elemental disposition, he also lacked any qualms about ingratiating himself with others, unlike his more timid twin. Born under a different star, both would have been warriors; instead, they were archers, horse-breeders, and born adventurers, Tathren having just himself returned from an exploration of the Glittering Caves and Cuthalion anticipating his own future journeys. 

His only son, Elrohir esteemed, had in his one hundred and twenty-second year grown into a soul not undeserving of his cousin’s unabashed reverence. Mercurial, kind-hearted, and bold beyond reason, his warmth of spirit radiated from him like the aurora above; he was a natural leader, but without a charge. This last Elrohir hoped he might find among more of his age, in Valinor, though he and his cousins were heart’s brothers, complicit and eternal. Indeed, it was his ever-vigilant guidance of their growth that had helped them through the trials of youth, as evidenced by Cuthalion’s relentless shadowing. Tathren, however, bore this as most things, with humility and with respect for the younger’s want of an example. 

The lively pair wasted no time in embracing their weary parents, whispering endearments and inquiring after their lonely task. Both children reeked of their compassion, but the beleaguered elves were more than happy to oblige them and surrender to their doting care. Cuthalion quickly latched himself onto Glorfindel, who strangely seemed the most affected, quickly ushering he and Elladan to their talan. Tathren kissed his Ada-Hir’s wind-burnt cheek and wove his arm around him, content to stroll down to the river in silence. Despite his best intentions, his son knew well of mortal death: Neyanna had been laid to rest some twenty years ago and he had insisted on accompanying them to Estel’s last night of life. 

As they ambled down the fertile banks to the rippling Anduin, a sight of overwhelming magnitude and splendor lay before them. A ship, some thirty oars long (though who would man them, he could not say) was held upright on the beach by various ropes, logs, and pulleys, her sails drawn but her masts as immovable as a mallorn. How his husband had suddenly evolved a talent for ship-building would forever remain a mystery, but Elrohir suspected the matter had something to do with a dwarf, as most matters of construction inevitably did. Though no elf other than they lay about, the dwarf in question lay dormant in a folding chair, snoring as the South Wind through Rivendell elms on a blustery autumn eve. 

At Tathren’s wry snicker, a tawny head popped up over the prow, its golden eyes searching, shrewd. With typical preoccupation, Echoriath slid down the side ladder and shuffled over to the easel on which the ship’s schematics were fixed, all without even noticing his kindred. If it were not for his odd eyes, Echoriath could easily be twinned accidentally with the brethren in Elrohir or Elladan’s stead. Painfully quiescent and timid to a fault, the tender elf proved frighteningly solitary at the best of times. He often shunned the invitations of even his brother and cousin, preferring to cultivate his garden, nurture his collection of rare plants, spend hours designing a greenhouse, a boat, or a talan, ever-mindful of the balance between the natural world and elven necessities. Indeed, under Gimli’s tutelage, he was fast becoming a master builder; he plied the crafts of wood-working, smithing, and glass-blowing as many young elves shot a longbow. Though an archer of middling skill, Echoriath could make any weapon and, if required, devise something novel. Not a moment of his self-imposed isolation was wasted on lethargy. If anything, his fathers worried that he did not rest enough, rarely swimming, jousting, or merrymaking unless forced by Cuthalion, or more persuasively by Tathren, who he loved as a brother. 

Indeed, it was his cousin’s familiar whistle that broke his concentration now. He looked up without raising his head, but appeared happy to see them both. 

“Have I told you, Ada,” Tathren informed him in a booming voice, as they sauntered down to the beach. “That Echoriath designed our ship?”

“Master Gimli gave me much assistance,” Echoriath himself murmured, as he hugged Elrohir in greeting. Solitary he may be, but the young elf was explicitly affectionate with his elders, from whom he drew what little resolve he possessed. “And Ada-Las has worked tirelessly…” He trailed off, as he often did, his amber eyes fixed on some problematic point. He jotted a few quick notes on the easel. “Are Ada-Dan and Ada-Fin returned as well?” 

“They are taking rest in your talan,” Tathren noted pointedly. “Your Naneth is there.” 

The spirited young elf noted an almost imperceptible dimming of his cousin’s amber eyes. Idrethiel, the twins’ gentle Naneth, would not be accompanying them to Valinor, preferring to stay in Ithilien with her mate and his daughters. In that moment, Tathren was unsure whether Echoriath had, indeed, made his peace with this. Putting any lingering thoughts of his own belated mother aside, Tathren vowed to shield his cousin from the heartache he himself had known too keenly. 

Each elf in the company, it seemed, would leave a piece of themselves in Arda. 

“Their journey has been trying,” Elrohir sighed, feeling rather bereft himself. “Glorfindel is particularly… afflicted. It would hearten him, I believe, to see you.” 

“I will go to him presently,” Echoriath agreed, his concern writ large on his comely features. “The ship will be readied for the dawn.” When Tathren proffered his hand, Echoriath dared a soft smile. 

“Come, gwador,” he beckoned. “I will escort you.” The young builder’s relief, in this, was writ large across his pinched face.

As the two youths climbed back up the rocks, Elrohir ventured aboard the ship, just as Legolas was exiting the hold. With a halting gasp, the Lord of Ithilien veritably leapt into his husband’s arms, his grief at Estel’s passing still palpable months after. Legolas had not weathered his absence well, though neither had he felt able to accompany Elrohir on his bitter errand. During his time of mourning, he’d shorn his flaxen locks in deference, cutting the endless sheathes of cornsilk hair just below his ears. Before Elrohir left for Lorien, they had grown some, but it seemed he had chopped them again; himself, on this occasion. Elrohir could tell by the cinch of his waist he had again forgone proper nourishment, no doubt in his obsession to complete their ship. His iridescent eyes, brilliant but forlorn, were burnished by the rabid call of the sea. 

Yet his kiss was potent as ever. 

“I have longed for your embrace, melethron,” Legolas rasped. “As the trees long for Arien’s grace to bless them. As a woodland elf longs for shelter beneath their lush bows.” 

Elrohir knew his mention of the long-restored Greenwood was not careless. The previous year, Legolas and Tathren had spent a month camping there, communing with the archer’s beloved forest and bidding its hollows farewell. Thranduil, though undoubtedly knowing of their presence, had let them be. Tathren had been heartbroken, but Legolas had not been moved. Despite Glorfindel’s well-known theories concerning the former Mirkwood King, it seems a son forsaken can never after be reclaimed. 

“How fare you, my brave one?” Elrohir inquired, pressing their faces intimately together. 

“I am well, now you are returned,” Legolas admitted. “Though I leave some livelihood in Arda… the sea’s call haunts me. I shall find my peace in the West.” 

“My peace is here,” Elrohir vowed, enveloping him in warmth and affection. “With you, where it ever was, maltaren-nin.” 

Legolas sighed in response, drawing strength and comfort from his mate’s soft mouth. 

In the sanctuary of a lover’s arms, Legolas and Elrohir looked to the North, across the resilient Anduin, to the land beyond. On the outskirts of the forest, on the terrace of their talan, Elladan and Glorfindel shared the view, Arien’s ethereal glow emerging from behind the cloud, on this, their last day in Arda. 

They looked West, these last truehearts of elfkind, towards Valinor.

 

End of Under the Elen

 

Author’s note: 

‘Tathren’ means ‘willow’, of obvious significance to Elrohir and Legolas. 

‘Cuthalion’ is the second name of Beleg (go read your Silmarillon), which means ‘strongbow’.

‘Echoriath’ means ‘encircling mountains’, as in the peaks that encircled Gondolin. 

 

Author’s Note Part Deux:

A HUGE thanks to all of my lurking readers for being so good as to take a gander at my latest ravings. I’d especially like to send my heartfelt thanks to Anorielle, Tuxedo Elf, Haldir’s Heart & Soul, Sian, Skoda, and Casualis for their excellent feedback and also for taking the time to review. My most vociferous thanks, however, have to go to wonderful Eresse, who has supported me through every turn. Everyone’s feedback fills me with light and joy, and I am forever grateful. 

COMING SOON: “Of Elbereth’s Bounty”, an epic tale of forbidden love, fatherly woes, and lots of smutty elves about. It’s the third in the ‘In Earendil’s Light’ series, and I hope you will all journey there with me!!


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